Mono, which released version 1.0 last month, is significant in several ways: it offers the potential to unite the open source communities for Windows, Linux, and other platforms; it fulfills the niche for a powerful migration tool; it builds upon existing open source technologies such as Mozilla and Apache; and — most importantly — it illustrates the resolve of the open source community to rise to MS’ challenge.
Why Mono is significant
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I don’t see anybody talking about Mono support for HP and Solaris platforms.
Apparently this guy hasn’t heard of other cross platform products, such as:
java
tk
wxwidgets
gnustep
qt (on X11 and OSX)
Now what practical advantage does Mono have over .NET? Why would someone move his .NET applications from Windows to *NIX?
Suppose GNOME would adopt Mono to write most of their applications on. Wouldn’t it then be very tempting to port them all to Windows, if it is so easy? And then what would be the point of using *NIX, if all its applications are also available on Windows?
To support this point: go count:
– Multi-platform applications not specifically designed for one platform: OpenOffice, Mozilla, Opera
– Applications ported from *NIX to Windows: The Gimp, XChat, Apache, everything that runs under Cygwin, Microsoft UNIX services, Windows’ TCP/IP utilities, …
– Applications ported from Windows to *NIX: ?
And isn’t it time for the open-source community to innovate on their own instead of copying everything from Windows (and Apple)?
” it illustrates the resolve of the open source community to rise to MS’ challenge.”
no offence to mono developers, but this sentence is amusing. i would say this whole .net in other OS’es thing is the bait that MS cleverly prepared. i see that it is almost succeding.
it builds upon existing open source technologies such as Mozilla and Apache;
Does it? Mono has absolutely nothing to do with Mozilla or Apache. You can run mod_mono as a module, and that’s about it.
provides a unique and significant opportunity to unite the open source development communities for Windows, Linux, and other platforms.
Which means that Mono is not working in that respect. To unify things more Mono has to become an integrative technology, and not dictate technology to people, like GTK#. Speaking from a commercial development perspective, I’d rather pay for something that already works on Windows, Linux and other platforms.
Through its use of the C# language, Mono can develop true cross-platform applications with ease. A C# application that adheres to the ECMA standards can be compiled on Windows and run natively on Linux as long as Mono is present on the system.
C# has nothing to do with Mono, .Net or the CLR environment. It has the potential to be a decent language, and that’s about it.
Projects that choose to write their applications in C# (together with a toolkit such as Gtk#) can now spread their applications outside of Linux. Prior to Mono, that territory was reserved for the big projects such as OpenOffice.org or Mozilla.
I can do that already without Mono, and I can be commercially supported. Open Office and Mozilla are not relevant, simply because they are applications and not development tools in themselves.
This portability can potentially expand the size of the developer communities for each project, leading to more mature open source applications available to the benefit of all platform users.
And now it becomes clear. The author is desperate for Mozilla and Open Office to adopt Mono in a large way.
It allows ECMA-compliant applications in C# (and other supported .Net languages) to be easily migrated to Linux. This can help to break down one of the final barriers which can prevent businesses from moving to Linux. Without Mono, software often has to be rewritten at a considerable expense in order to migrate.
That may be a good idea in the years to come.
Anything which can help to ease the migration from Windows to Linux in the corporate sector must be seen as a significant development, with far-reaching consequences for companies advocating migration to Linux, such as Novell and IBM.
Please Novell and IBM. Adopt Mono!
The best is still to come. Windows.Forms is being developed for release later in the year. It will attempt to recreate the Win32 functions of native Windows applications in applications written on Linux. That will aid in the migration of applications that are currently heavily integrated into the Windows environment.
If I can simply re-compile, why bother?
Mono’s ability to build upon existing open source technologies such as Mozilla and the Apache Web server is also significant. Mono provides bindings that make it easy for developers to embed the Mozilla browser into their applications. This can allow developers to build more innovative desktop applications that bring together local data with that on the Internet. An example of this would be applying for a bank loan through an embedded application.
Mmm, I think we’re thinking too far ahead here.
Possibly of even greater significance is the fact that Mono is able to provide ASP.Net functionality for the Apache Web server. This enables complete cross-platform development and deployment of Web applications. Developers of ASP.Net applications are no longer locked in to Microsoft’s commercial Internet Information Server. Mono’s ASP.Net functionality can only help to consolidate Apache as the Internet’s most popular Web server.
So what are all of those sites running PHP, Java and Zope doing now then?
In the two years since Microsoft released its milestone version of the framework, .Net has remained little more than a buzzword in many quarters, with Microsoft unable to capitalise on the technology.
I think that sums it up.
I was going to point you to the page with the cpus/OS’s that are supported by mono but I can’t find it on the new page. Anyways, Solaris/Sparc is supposed to work fully.
I’m not sure about HP stuff.
You will find half *ss implementation of that everywhere. but only one platform will be “really” supported (guess what), unlike java.
The comments to this article are very typical. Why is the open source community so god-damn hostile about Mono? Mono really is an important technology. It gives us one more choice and one more tool in our arsenal. The stronger .NET is, the better for users of alternative development frameworks. Look at how much better this is going to make Java, not to mention Perl, Python, and other languages.
Look at how much PHP5 has improved because of competition from ASP.NET. The same thing is true for Gnome and KDE.
Look at how crappy GCC is compared to other compilers. (It has almost NO freely-avaiable competition.) This isn’t a bash against GCC (it really is best-of-breed in its field) just an observation that it would probably be a helluva lot better if it had effective competition.
Now lets give Miguel and all of the others a nice and well-deserved round of applause. Mono really is coming along very nicely.
java – windows doesn’t ship with it anymore and swing doesn’t integrate with the desktop well. maybe GCJ and SWT/JFace is an option
tk – hehe, you’re joking right?
wxwidgets – just a toolkit and works on .NET/Mono right now
gnustep – nobody really cares about it. will never take off
qt – license problems
————————————————————-
See, what people don’t get is that Windows has 95% of the desktop market. It doesn’t matter if Python or some random toolkit is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The point is that _eventually_ there will be .NET runtime on almost every windows desktop. The normal python is just another dependency problem for windows users. IronPython (that targets .NET) might be a viable option, and would probably give Python a nice little speed boost to boot.
Instead of thinking of languages and toolkits, you need to start thinking of platforms. Java was almost there, but because of problems with Swing, memory consumption, and all around Sun screwups regarding java its just never going to be that big on the windows desktop. Heck, it’s not even big on the linux desktop. Also, the java bytecode and runtime isn’t that conducive to multi-language support. Yeah, it can be done, but its a pain and isn’t nearly as rich as ECMA 335. Sun couldn’t even be bothered to do generics right in Java 5.0.
So basically you can whine all you want about why don’t people use Python or Java or Joe-sourceforge’s pet project of the week, but its irrelevant. C# is a good language, better than Java for us people coming from a c++ background, and it is going to be huge on windows eventually.
… and Samba was also completely useless, because NFS rules the world now … ?
Can’t believe, how much ignorants and zealots are out there …
Why is the open source community so god-damn hostile about Mono?
Simple. The technology was invented by Microsoft. It’s irrelevant to these people that C#/.NET is better than Java.
Another thing is that these people look at it from the wrong angle. They look at linux as the primary platform and windows as the secondary platform when thinking about crossplatform. Linux is still pretty much irrelevant on the desktop. They don’t understand that most people in the real world think of windows first and linux as an afterthought on the desktop.
And isn’t it time for the open-source community to innovate on their own instead of copying everything from Windows (and Apple)?
Basically that’s the point why I’ll probably never like mono. Though my (very personal and subjective) dislike for GNOME might play a role there as well.
I really wish that Mono was a realistic option, but its not. I have read every article I can find on Mono’s legal status and am not satisfied.
People can talk about how wonderful it is, talk about the ECMA, throw in RAND while they are at it, then even mention that parts might be royalty free, but when all is said and done its only viable when MS says that its okay to use their classes, until then, use it at your peril.
*I know it must get old reading people complaining about the legal situation of Mono, but we only respond to the plethora of articles which gloss over the problems, or give completely inadequate answers.
Its because we keep responding to people who write insane articles glossing over the most important things, how many patents are there on MS classes? Can Mono use them without fear of litigation?
Those are the questions that have not been answered anywhere near well enough for us to go away. When the questions get answered we’ll go away. But please don’t give me any ambiguos quotes by MS employees. Besides Ballmer has already said something like,“We spent to much on .Net to give it away.”.
Well see when he decides to collect.
If C#/.Net is superior to anything else out there is not the point. The point is that Mono’s success could be the ultimate weapon against GNU/Linux.
So I could care less if C#/.Net is superior to Java/Python/PHP blah blah. It hasn’t been certified OSS ready if you understand me!
No you’re looking at it from the wrong angle. Java is already entrenched, maybe not on the desktop as you see it, but certainly on workstations. Practical example IBM’s tool for managing LPARs (logical partitions) on Pseries : written in java it runs on AIX workstations, Linux workstations, and windows workstations (it is supported there, since it is java the possible range of platforms is greater). A lot of investment is already in java : education of programmers and who knows how many man hours writing code.
Java already offers true cross platform ability : not just Windows and Linux but ALL unix flavors, windows and a lot of smaller and older platforms. Supported by multiple vendors also.
To me .NET looks to be a windows only technology. The biggest thing MONO has going for it is ikvm (IMHP)
“We spent to much on .Net to give it away.”.
If you want people to stop giving ambiguous quotes, you should try not to drop ambiguous quotes yourself
You will never hear anything from MS for the simple reason they will never show any kind of support to any OSS-related project, for obvious reasons. So all the Mono guys can do is trust their lawyers, I suppose (well, _hope_) Novell and Ximian hired some smart lawyers to check all the possibilities.
Me? I’d prefer OSS to embrace Python or Ruby, it’s free, it’s a great technology, and it’s theoretically safe (although with the insane US patent system, any smart piece of software might accidentally infringe a patent somewhere)
aren’t you uncomfortable sleeping with all that FUD everynight?? – It’s amazing if you can actually make it out of the house in the morning … you might get sued ya know – can you really take that chance? Why don’t you come up with some *specific* for this discussion? Like a pattent that is actually infringed upon or anything real besides FUD…
Does it? Mono has absolutely nothing to do with Mozilla or Apache. You can run mod_mono as a module, and that’s about it.
They’ve built an ASP.NET implimentation on top of Apache, and they’ve made embedding Mozilla very easy with Gecko-sharp, how is that not building onto of other technologies?
Which means that Mono is not working in that respect. To unify things more Mono has to become an integrative technology, and not dictate technology to people, like GTK#. Speaking from a commercial development perspective, I’d rather pay for something that already works on Windows, Linux and other platforms
GTK# works on any platform that GTK and Mono work (Windows, Linux, *BSD, MacOSX).
C# has nothing to do with Mono, .Net or the CLR environment. It has the potential to be a decent language, and that’s about it.
Mono is written in C#, C# was the main language for .NET. Both come with a compiler for it, how can you say that they have nothing to do with each other?
Please Novell and IBM. Adopt Mono!
You might want to check the copyright on Mono.
If I can simply re-compile, why bother?
Last time I checked, The complete Win32 API wasn’t available under Linux
No its not half-assed. The Solaris/SPARC port was made by one of the main mono hackers, who I am very sure does not half-ass anything. The same applies to MacOSX/ppc and will for others in the future.
If you want to be a java zealot, than be one. If you cannot see that mono offers more than LCD platform-independence that is your loss. However, I am sure enough people want to write cross-platform apps so that the option will also be available eventually.
It hasn’t been certified OSS ready if you understand me!
The mere fact that you feel it needs to be certified OSS proves the point that I was making to trapper.
By the way, dotGNU is an official GNU project so maybe you should talk to comrade Stallman to see if it’s open source enough.
Yeah, good points – just one minor correction. Mono(the runtime) was written in straight C. mcs(the compiler) and the class libraries were written in c#.
I recommend everyone to try out C# who haven’t even tried to write it yet. I find it much more interesting than Java, for example, which Swing thing has never really appealed for me. With C#, I can write easily portable code for native toolkits for both worlds (Linux: GTK# and QT#, and for Windows with Windows.Forms). I’d prolly have stayed in PHP for all eternity without environment like Mono and language like C#. Funny thing that most of the people who bash Mono aren’t even coders themselves nor ever wrote a single line of C#…
“Developers, Developers, Developers!!!!!”
Thats what its all about.
Simple facts. 90%+ developers are on windows. MS plans on pushing .NET hard in the coming years. I think its safe to assume that ~2010 a majority of developers will be .NET oriented.
If you want to attract those developers, you have to give them technologies that they recongize.
If developers want c#, dont spit in their faces and give them Java/python/whatever flavor of the month.
So what about : AIX, os/2 (yep we still use it), FreeBSD (can’t believe they’re still missing THAT one), UnixWare (boo, hiss), IRIX, PalmOS, various embedded devices.
Sure Mono may eventually get there but when ? How long did it take Mozilla to get to that stage. Without major backing Mono won’t make it to all these platforms, and the big boys are backing Java.
Listen fudsters, there are so many idiotic software patents that no matter what language/runtime you develop in there’s always a chance that someone is going to pull a SCO on you. I’ll give you some FUD. Sun is never going to recoup the development costs that they’ve pored into Java no matter how many J2EE licenses they sell. So why haven’t they open sourced java? Maybe because they have numerous patents on Java. See the FUD can work anyway you want it to.
The real reason that people don’t like Mono is because its Microsoft tech. That, or because these FUDsters are ignorant regarding software patents in general. They also probably read too much slashdork.
You should check out dotgnu, aka Portable.NET. It runs on FreeBSD, some embedded devices and shouldn’t be that hard to port to those other almost extinct platforms you mentioned.
Holy moly man – slow down… they just came out with verion 1 which is almost 2 years behind MS. Mono will expand but people are going to have step up to the plate to help. Mono is supported on many platforms already. I can’t remember the list off the top of my head.
Simple, when enough people want/need it to get it ported. For a reference, mono does work on FreeBSD (there was GC problems) and in a much easier fashion then Java on FreeBSD. The fact is, some platforms are more important than others, and things will be prioritized. Those that care about all these other platforms should work on them, some are already being worked on I expect.
I think my original point was missed. If you want to use Java, then do so. However, don’t act like it fulfills the same needs that mono does, because it doesn’t. They are seperate and can even be complimentary at times.
Question 52: What operating systems does Mono run on?
Mono is known to run on Linux, UNIX and Windows systems.
—————————————-
Question 54: What architectures does Mono support?
Mono today ships with a Just-in-Time compiler for x86, PowerPC, S390 and SPARC-based systems. It is tested regularly on Linux, FreeBSD and Windows (with the XP/NT core).
There is also an interpreter, which is slower that runs on the x86, s390, SPARC, HPPA, StrongARM and PowerPC architectures.
http://www.mono-project.com/about/technical.html
Licensing and Patents
http://www.mono-project.com/about/licensing.html
I really wish that Mono was a realistic option, but its not. I have read every article I can find on Mono’s legal status and am not satisfied.
This is ridiculous FUD…if you were truly worried about the legal status of Mono, you wouldn’t even be running Linux in the first place.
Linux isn’t exactly on solid legal footing at the moment either. Also, do you use Fedora Core, Red Hat, or another similarly MP3/DVD crippled Linux distro? Otherwise you have to pay royalties to the owners of those patents by law.
Now personally, I don’t think the SCO lawsuit or the legal issues surrounding MP3 and DVD playback on Linux are anything to actually worry about. However, if you are as paranoid about legal issues as you say you are, these things should make you lose more sleep than issues surrounding Mono’s legality.
The patent-paranoids should not even open their browsers, just in case!!!
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/17741.html
While your at it, better delete all your jpegs.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63200,00.html
No porno for you
Mono 1.0 run just fine on FreeBSD
“With DotGNU and Mono, you will be able to use C# if you wish, without surrendering your freedom to study, share, change and generally control all the software that you use.”
If Richard Stallman isn’t afraid of efforts like Mono and .GNU playing into the monopolizing hands of M$, then it must be OK. After all, he is the alpha zealot. Furthermore, from everything I’ve read about Miguel de Icaza he has always struck me as a pretty smart guy. I doubt that he would steer his company into this massive development effort in producing Mono only to smack himself on the forehead and yell “Doh!” when M$ asks everyone to pay up for using Mono. Sometimes I don’t even know how some of you people manage to even breathe.
What licencing problems are you refering to? From the trolltech website:
The Qt Free Editions contain the same code as our Commercial Editions, but are governed by licensing terms that are entirely different.
The Qt Free Edition is available under two open-source licences: the GPL (GNU Public License), and the QPL (Q Public License). Both these licenses are suitable for the development of Free Open Source Software for Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X.
The Qt Free Editions may be freely copied and distributed, put on FTP sites and CD-ROMs, etc., under the same open-source licenses that they are supplied with. This is completely different from the Qt Commercial Editions which cannot be distributed at all.
– We provide the Qt Free Editions with no warranty and no support
– Based on the “Quid Pro Quo” principle, if you wish to derive a commercial advantage by not releasing your application under an open source license, you must purchase an appropriate number of commercial licenses from Trolltech. By purchasing commercial licenses, you are no longer obliged to publish your source code.
– If you wish to use a Qt Free Edition, you must contribute all your source code to the open source community in accordance with the GPL or the QPL’s license terms.
No problem!! If you’re developing an open source app, then the QT toolkit is free. If you are developing a commercial app, then you need to pay for a commercial QT licence. What’s wrong with that? Do you think you should be able to release a closed source app and make money off of it by using trolltech’s code base and not pay them for it?
I doubt that he would steer his company into this massive development effort in producing Mono only to smack himself on the forehead and yell “Doh!” when M$ asks everyone to pay up for using Mono
Maybe Ximian/Novell actually have some kind of non-agression agreement with MS, but MS put the condition that such a deal would not be publicized, since they don’t want to have anything publically related to OSS? I mean, if MS wanted, they could have spread some FUD related to Mono already.
Well, just a theory.
I often wonder if in the lust for Linux to gain market share and become a real competitor to MS on the desktop if the entire FOSS community hasn’t shot themselves in the head.
First they worry endlessly about patent suits, then they worry about what tools are used to write FOSS applications.
Reading many of the posts above tells a lot of the story of why things remain as they are. Too many people worried about standards, patents, and tools, and not nearly enough people actually doing anything to create applications.
Imagine if all of this energy was applied to actually doing something, rather than arguing forever about what rules to follow.
For God’s sake just do something rather than discuss doing something.
I really wish that Mono was a realistic option, but its not. I have read every article I can find on Mono’s legal status and am not satisfied.
In *my* country at least this wouldn’t be possible. The SW world is aware of Mono, and as such MS would have already had to warn Mono that they’re infringing on their rights if they wished to claim that later on.
I think most people who don’t understand why Mono is important simply don’t understand .NET or Mono. At least that’s the only conclusion at which I can arrive. I hear people saying, “But there are other cross platform toolkits and languages like python, Perl, java, wxWindows, tk!” .NET/Mono isn’t just a cross-platform language or toolkit. That is one important feature of Mono, but it isn’t the whole story. .NET allows multiple languages to use the same objects, Mono takes that and takes it about 7 steps further. You can now run this platform on multiple architectures. You now have access to a whole slew of open source technologies such as mozilla, open office, mysql, open source languages such as python. You can take your Java code and run it on mono using .NET objects.
Mono does something else that’s crucial. As the article mentions, it is a migration path for windows developers. I don’t think some of you fully appreciate this. I am in contact with quite a few windows developers. Guys that appreciate the value of Visual Studio.NET but also have their eye on Linux to see where it’s going. Now that Mono 1.0 is out they are keenly interested in the possibility of writing their software on Windows and deploying on Linux. Because of Mono we now have new Linux and open source users. No other platform or technology has as much potential (as Mono) to unite the previously diverse worlds of Windows and Linux/Open Source developers. You are now seeing more and more cases where open source applications are finding their way to Linux desktops. Some examples include Firefox, openoffice.org, gaim, cygwin, etc. On the flip side, Mono is bringing to Linux, applications that previously only ran on Windows. More and more code is being shared, more code is being open sourced, and both platforms (Windows and Linux) are improved. I don’t think some of you see the future too clearly or the end goal. You will eventually, though.
The issue is not how many programs have been ported from Windows to Unix. The issue is that, if Mono or DotGNU deliver what they promise, *any* Windows (.NET) program in the future will work on UNIX, without being ported! Now that would be an achievement.
Mono has absolutely nothing to do with Mozilla or Apache. You can run mod_mono as a module, and that’s about it.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Check out the libraries!
To unify things more Mono has to become an integrative technology, and not dictate technology to people, like GTK#.
I didn’t realize Mono dictated GTK#, especially seeing that Mono is working increasingly openly on integrating Windows.Forms the best way possible.
C# has nothing to do with Mono, .Net or the CLR environment. It has the potential to be a decent language, and that’s about it.
C# has a lot to do with Mono, .Net, and CLR, as they all have a lot to do with C#. You’re trying to make disparity from what is clearly associative.
Open Office and Mozilla are not relevant, simply because they are applications and not development tools in themselves.
Oh but you’re missing the strength of said applications. Mozilla in particular gives developers a clear edge on development. You should really look into the libraries, as I’ve said before.
And now it becomes clear. The author is desperate for Mozilla and Open Office to adopt Mono in a large way.
And you are clearly desperate to say otherwise, even if that includes making hastened, and often false, statements.
That may be a good idea in the years to come.
I agree. It’s a good idea. I’m using it every day!
Please Novell and IBM. Adopt Mono!
Here is an example of your hastened, false, statements. Novell is leading Mono, and Mono is a trademark of Novell!
>The best is still to come. Windows.Forms is being
>developed for release later in the year. It will attempt
>to recreate the Win32 functions of native Windows
>applications in applications written on Linux. That will
>aid in the migration of applications that are currently
>heavily integrated into the Windows environment.
If I can simply re-compile, why bother?
What does your response have to do with the quote?
>Mono’s ability to build upon existing open source
>technologies such as Mozilla and the Apache Web server is
>also significant. Mono provides bindings that make it
>easy for developers to embed the Mozilla browser into
>their applications. This can allow developers to build
>more innovative desktop applications that bring together
>local data with that on the Internet. An example of this
>would be applying for a bank loan through an embedded
>application.
Mmm, I think we’re thinking too far ahead here.
You are entitled to your opinion. I personally feel thinking ahead is good. It’s a great planning strategy. Scenarios are simply models of design that we can strategize against.
So what are all of those sites running PHP, Java and Zope doing now then?
They are running PHP, Java or Zope!
>In the two years since Microsoft released its milestone
>version of the framework, .Net has remained little more
>than a buzzword in many quarters, with Microsoft unable
>to capitalise on the technology.
I think that sums it up.
Your quote is taken out of context. Microsoft did a poor job promoting .Net (though I feel their efforts have been adequate), but .Net is becoming stronger without Microsoft’s exclusive involvement.
Imagine if all of this energy was applied to actually doing something, rather than arguing forever about what rules to follow.
Well, actually Mono is on 1.0 now, so they _did_ something, it’s not as if they browse OSNews all day.
You also forgot to put the links to your projects, so we could check what else you’ve been doing besides complaining about people complaining
I said it once, I will say it again… .NET doesn’t hold a candle to Java. As a developer who has used both techs, .Net is a very crummy framework.
If your definition of framework is the class libraries then your post might have some validity, but .NET is superior in so many way to java.
First off, the CLR. Java wasn’t designed with multi-language in mind. It will never run languages like C/C++. .NET already does. The JVM and java bytecode just isn’t advanced enough to allow multi-language interop effectively without a bunch of hacks that are a pain for the developer
C# is better than Java. That is just fact. Maybe you come from a VB background and operator overloading scares you, but the rest of us appreciate that, enums, delegates/events, autoboxing, user-defined value types, the ability to easily interop with native code, variable-length arguments(Java 5 finally gets a proper printf after how many years?), attributes, properties, foreach, etc… Yeah, Java 5 is getting some of that, but they can’t even do generics properly.
Sun has just screwed up with Java too many times for anything serious on the desktop except maybe some dev tools.
But don’t worry, people are happily using Mono on linux, mac, bsd right now and there’s nothing you or anybody else can do to stop that no matter how much you whine.
There’s a thing I’ve always wanted to know. Has the KDE team ever made a statement on Mono? From what I’ve read, Mono always seem to be related to Gnome, but few things have been said about Mono and the KDE project. Would it also be useful for KDE development?
Forgive my poor english…
People go on about how it is a multiple-language platform. Well, it isn’t, really: you have to bastardise any given language to make it .NET compatible. Look at VB, and the hordes of VB developers abandoning that platform for Java, when faced with the complexity of .NET and the wrecking of VB.
C#, unfortunately, takes a lot of bad influences from c++. This means it has lots of half arsed features that increase complexity, rather than hiding it. Sure, for certain self-consciously 133t types, c# prolly seems like the dog’s bollocks, this is why certain screamy proselytising sorts have adopted it already, and seemingly spend all their time tugging at their genitalia here on osnews. But I have not seen any serious, professional developers adopt it. For example, the 133t kids will rant on about autoboxing, but they won’t tell you about all the recently uncovered counterintuitive problems with autoboxing (making c# a language where i < j can be false, and i > j false, and i == j false also! How intuitive! Thanks, autoboxing.
Ditto the other silly features, whether that’s operator overloading or the likes: they’d be wonderful in a ten line perl script, I’m sure, but just utterly crappy for serious development in a medium or large team, unless you outright ban them from use.
As for mono, it’s all hype, really. Novell has stuck all of ten developers on it and still focuses itself far more on its various java solutions. I’d view mono more as a long-odds bet for that company, but it looks shakier when you consider the recent refocusing of the company towards Qt thanks to the SuSE acquisition.
On the patents front, mono can’t provide a platform that is both safe for developers from a patent-infringement point of view, and yet is also a wonderful migration path for windows applications. You can pick precisely one of these. Only C# the core language is under ECMA and an open standard; everything else, be that Windows.Forms, ADO, ASP.NET, whatever, the works, is so patent-encumbered and non-open its not funny, so I don’t know what the mono-crowd are trying to pull iwth their lies. The Linux world has already seen what happens when you get very lacadaisical about ownership and patent issues. Mono is desperately seeking partners in the rest of the linux world, be that through Gnome, Mozilla, OpenOffice or elsewhere, but given the powerful interests in these organisations from the likes of Sun and given the legal dodginess of mono and recent history, it doesn’t have a hope in hell of adoption.
This will annoy all the genitalia tuggers in the mono-camp of course, their new toy with its 10 serious users being left pissing in the wind forever, but that’s the way its going to be. They won’t give up the endless propaganda campaigns here on osnews (not till something newer and shinier for them to gawp at comes along anyway) so expect to see the blizzard of 5 pro-mono articles that sweep the unpopularity and the legal difficulties under the carpet every single day, until such time perhaps as eugenia realises that nobody cares about mono and it isn’t going anywhere.
Unpleasant truths, but that’s the way it is.
but it looks shakier when you consider the recent refocusing of the company towards Qt thanks to the SuSE acquisition.
Er…wtf?
Is that why Novell announced that they are standardizing on gtk# internally a few months ago?
…everything else, be that Windows.Forms, ADO, ASP.NET, whatever, the works, is so patent-encumbered and non-open its not funny, so I don’t know what the mono-crowd are trying to pull iwth their lies.
What lies? Thats the whole reason Mono is divided into 2 stacks. Try actually reading the FAQ before posting such garabge.
“The .NET Framework is divided in two parts: the ECMA/ISO covered technologies and the other technologies developed on top of it like ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms.”
http://www.mono-project.com/about/licensing.html
their new toy with its 10 serious users being left pissing in the wind forever, but that’s the way its going to be. They won’t give up the endless propaganda campaigns
Right, so I guess your just going to disregard the fact that the first day Mono 1.0 was released there was 50,000 downloads! Oh I guess Muine, Evolution 2.0, Dashboard,ifolder, crap load of applets, etc dont count as serious projects.
>>This portability can potentially expand the size of the >>developer communities for each project, leading to more >>mature open source applications available to the benefit >>of all platform users.
>
>And now it becomes clear. The author is desperate for >Mozilla and Open Office to adopt Mono in a large way.
>
Of course he is. Take a real close look where all the Pro-Mono noise and articles are coming from. Pretty much sites that focus on *WINDOWS* development and developers like CNet and so forth.
Notice on the other hand how the Mozilla and Open Office folks among other Free Software/Open Source developers aren’t rushing out putting out PR statements promising all kinds of wild support for Mono?
Interesting isn’t it?
Sure, for certain self-consciously 133t types, c# prolly seems like the dog’s bollocks, this is why certain screamy proselytising sorts have adopted it already, and seemingly spend all their time tugging at their genitalia here on osnews. But I have not seen any serious, professional developers adopt it.
I suppose our Computer Science department at college chose to switch from C++ to C# because they wanted our students to be, as you put it so presumptuously, 1337.
Seriously, though, their decision to switch to C# was by all means a professional decision, and based on the rising need for C# developers in the professional world. Their decision is based on empirical data, not some arrogant idea of what language is 1337.
All hail the Mono propaganda machine, it sure is making some buzz…
Sheesh, java is crossplatform, you do have native interfaces for it (Java GNOME), or cross platform (SWT/wx4java) and even neutral ones (SWING).
You can write in lots of languages (http://flp.cs.tu-berlin.de/~tolk/vmlanguages.html).
We have a free alternative, even if Sun goes ballista and starts suing GCJ/Kaffe/Sablevm (which is irrealistic) we can still use JRE because it works under linux (with increasing support), the same would not be true if MS did the same to Mono (and that can/will happen).
Look at how crappy GCC is compared to other compilers. (It has almost NO freely-avaiable competition.) This isn’t a bash against GCC (it really is best-of-breed in its field) just an observation that it would probably be a helluva lot better if it had effective competition.
>
>
GCC is in a class by iteslf. There is pretty much *NO* complier free or otherwise that can be compared to it.
Name a platform or operating system and you can pretty much be sure that there is a current version of GCC and it’s toolbase running on it.
Name *ONE* other compiler you can say that for.
…until such time perhaps as eugenia realises that nobody cares about mono and it isn’t going anywhere.
You arrogant little….
Who says nobody cares about mono–you? Obviously people do care; you are the one who does not care, not every body including you. What a ridiculous statement you utter!
I suppose our Computer Science department at college chose to switch from C++ to C# because they wanted our students to be, as you put it so presumptuously, 1337.
As long as they aren’t saying that C# is the best, C# will cook your dinner, C# is perfect, all other languages are dying, blah de blah, like the mono hangers-on do. These sentiments are the hallmark of unprofessionalism and, yes, 133tness.
Community colleges variously like to churn out practical programmers schooled in some industrial language in a practical sense, so most choose java, c++ and sometimes c#, depending (often depending on what industrial cash backing they can get), so fine.
As for the other chap, his 50,000 downloads crack reminded me of jboss and their similar marketing attempts: “8 million downloads! We’re the bestest!” but no actual investigation of adoption or anything like that, no.
I wish the mono folk would realise they don’t have much of a hope if osnews is the best they can do on the astroturfing stakes.. Real platforms astroturf and market in business week and the economist, they don’t focus their efforts on two bit websites like osnews as the mono folks seem to. Sigh.
As for the other chap, his 50,000 downloads crack reminded me of jboss and their similar marketing attempts: “8 million downloads! We’re the bestest!” but no actual investigation of adoption or anything like that, no.
I never said that Mono is becoming the domiant devel platform(maybe in the future). I was just pointing out the fact that its popular. Stop putting words in my mouth you java-weenie.
So basically you can whine all you want about why don’t people use Python or Java or Joe-sourceforge’s pet project of the week, but its irrelevant. C# is a good language, better than Java for us people coming from a c++ background, and it is going to be huge on windows eventually.
>
>
And since the people *NOT* interested in programing under Mono doesn’t seem to be all that interested in programing under Microsoft Windows using C++ why should
they give a damn?
This seems to be the question that the Pro-Mono crowd can’t or won’t answer.
I’m just pointing out that “50000 downloads” is no reflection of popularity. In fact, if I were the leader of a hip and happening project like mono, I’d feel a bit diss apointed with that figure. It’s really very small.
I wouldn’t call myself a java weenie, either. I have used many platforms professionally, including .NET, which I found quite decent for certain windows-focused client-side apps. Server-side I think it is beaten on the low end by PHP and on the high end by J2EE, but the interesting action seems to be in the middle right now, with IBM and MS both competing aggressively, IBM trying to move its hegemony downwards, and MS trying to move its hegemony upwards (it being chased up by lower cost solutions from the OSS world), so it’ll be interesting to see where things go there.
I can’t see .NET being a serious contender for clientside development that’s not in-house for at least six years, and server-side I think it really has its work cut out for it. Not least, MS keep adopting shiny new APIs and are a bit too fond of adopting general silliness without thinking through the consequences, so it is a tad too untried and unstable for much use at all right now. It will become more popular, however it won’t ever become the #1 platform in my books. .NET is reactive to other technologies, it is not really a technology that sets the pace so much as one that is trying to maintain MS’s position by bringing it up to equality for developers with other technologies such as java and php.
I still think mono itself is rather silly, and I hugely doubt it will go anywhere at all. It will not be adopted by gnome or other major linux technologies, not a chance in hell. It will never catch up sufficiently with MS to make porting a doddle, it will remain a somewhat interesting but ultimately flawed piece of technology, another kaffe.
This seems to be the question that the Pro-Mono crowd can’t or won’t answer.
It might be because we cant understand your question.
Please rephrase.
>I said it once, I will say it again… .NET doesn’t hold >a candle to Java. As a developer who has used both >techs, .Net is a very crummy framework. I fear the day >that it spoils the linux waters, I can see the armies of >lawyers getting ready for war!
Could you be more specific as to the problems and issues you encoutered?
> GCC is in a class by iteslf. There is pretty much *NO* complier free or otherwise that can be compared to it. Name a platform or operating system and you can pretty much be sure that there is a current version of GCC and it’s toolbase running on it. Name *ONE* other compiler you can say that for.
How about Metrowerks CodeWarrior?
If one where to consider an intuitive notion of comment quality, the majority of osnews comments on mono exemplify the lowest possible quality. Let’s summarise comments in this thread:
* Clueless non-technical type comments:
Mono suxors, because: It is by microsoft. By my ‘vast’ experience (java|python) is better.
* Informed, but rehashing the same old thing:
I don’t like mono becaue of: Patents. No language is ‘THE BEST’ for everyting.
* Informed, deperately tyring to educate the uneducated first catagory on why C# is a nice langauge, and why the CLI is nice as well.
Honestly, this thread is the geek equivalent of Jerry Springer.
Oh, apologies in advance to those who don’t actually fit the above stereo types.
And to the third catagory of poster, give up. Some people are not here to learn, only to bash microsoft. You *can’t* educate them.
OK im not trying to start a fight between the merits of .NET and Java.
All im trying to say is:
1.) MS is the dominant force in the SW industry and will be for the foreseeable future.
2.) The majority of developers are on windows (90%+)
3.) MS will push .NET — developers will use .NET
4.) OSS community wants to attract windows developers
5.) Mono can/will aid in migrating windows developers.
THATS ALL!!!
You can’t airbrush over legitmate concerns by making out that there’s only one possible sensible and informed position, and that that sensible and informed position happens to be that mono is the dog’s bollocks. Spare us!
Lumberg should perhaps realise that he hasn’t actually any evidence that mono will go anywhere. I think saying so is as laughable as saying kaffe will be massively popular. You can say it and say it, but the fact is Gnome won’t adopt it, and mono, while it will doubtless be used a little, does not in fact represent any sort of wonderful new development paradigm that’s going to become enormously popular. If it were, given its two years plus in incubation already, I’d expect to see people adopting it! But they’re not. Because its too risky and doesn’t bring much new to the table. Why bother? That’s what we, the developers, are all telling you. Call us retards or call us ignorant or try to brush aside our concerns, but that won’t work.
The vast amount of scepticism and boredom that greets every mono article here, and the complete lack of serious backing for it from powerful, industry-wide bodies should perhaps just-maybe make you realise that. Damn.
>You can write in lots of languages (http://flp.cs.tu->berlin.de/~tolk/vmlanguages.html) [in Java].
The fact that you wrote this means you don’t understand .NET. All those languages are separate, .NET languages can seamlessly invoke each other.
Whoops I forgot to include that in one of my posts.
“Language independence. Perhaps the most important factor is, that all langauges “are created eval”. Yes, that’s the right word. There are not one or two languages, that can be consumed by others, if you want to be independent from language. (A bit wired.) Example: All Gnome APIs are written in C. This ensures, that you can write an applicaton in Python, by accessing these C libraries through bindings. But you cannot access Python programs through C. In the .NET world this is possible. Write in C#, MonoBasic, or whatever, you can without any problems reuse those classes. Great!”
http://www.gotmono.com/docs/mono/dotnet.html
There is only one possible sensible and informed position. And this is it:
Mono/C#/CLI is technically a nice system. It is better than Java in this regard. From a languages point of view, C# has some neat things such as anonymous functions and generics. The CLI is also quite neat, and has been designed in way the will hopefullly enable new types of automated optimization to be used. Note that this position does not say anything about C# being the King of all languages, or that procedural languages are better than functional, or anything else of the sort. CLI is also interesting in that other languages can be run on it, unlike the Java VM. This doesn’t say that it is the ONLY such platform.
We know that there are potential patent issues and that some people are scared of them. It doesn’t change a thing by parroting it forever.
Mono is backed by Novel. C# and the CLI are backed by the ECMA (yes yes, patents, everyone knows), and mono is an ECMA implementation.
This is the only informed position. These are the facts. I only wish that people would stop posting garbage that is obviously uniformed and wrong. It’s also extremely tiring to hear people complain endlessly about patent issues. If Microsoft didn’t make it, people would not be complaining as much as they are now, even if the very same patent issues were present.
You comment about use of mono is interesting though. And here is my take on it. I figure a big reason that mono has not gained a lot of use yet due to it’s maturity. I wanted to use C# for my current project, but mono was not mature enough to fit the bill. Most notably, support for lots of platforms was lacking at the time, as well as generics and anonymous functions.
As for mono becoming popular, obviously no one can say for sure. There are a lot of people who like C# and the CLI and want to use it. There are a lot of people who wont use it. There are a lot of people who won’t use C++ either. So no posts claiming to have ‘the answer’ in this regard are informative.
I hope i never catch mono. It totally sucks. One of my friends had mono, and was bed-ridden for weeks.
Here’s to hoping that as few people as possible get mono.
Thank you for your time.
Projects which reduce the necessity of using a specific operating system are ultimately good for operating systems which people freely choose to use.
There are legions of people opening their minds to the idea that there’s something besides Microsoft when they see how well things like Firefox and Open Office work.
The overwhelming Windows monopoly can be used against bad software, by making it easy for good software to make huge inroads.
I dunno,
I recently went down the road of finding a good cross-platform
compiler, and to be honest, .NET, Mono did nothing for me (I’ve coded in C/C++ for over 12 years now), what I did find I think leaves Mono in the dust, and thats Lazarus. A RAD IDE that uses the FPC compiler (yes, PASCAL)… Based off Delphi, it’s cross platform for BSD, Linux, Windows, and the FPC compiler is indeed nice.
Just because Pascal is apparently “old” and “obsolete” I’d recommend it to anyone looking at FAST app dev under gtk and win32.
http://lazarus.freepascal.org
How about Metrowerks CodeWarrior?
>
Let’s see…Does it run under DOS?
or a whole host of other computers and
other OS’s?
“Now what practical advantage does Mono have over .NET? Why would someone move his .NET applications from Windows to *NIX?”
The usual reason. More customers mean more money.
“Suppose GNOME would adopt Mono to write most of their applications on. Wouldn’t it then be very tempting to port them all to Windows, if it is so easy? And then what would be the point of using *NIX, if all its applications are also available on Windows?”
That would be Microsofts worst nightmare. Windows have very little value in itself. People use windows because this is where the applications are. If windows people got used to free *NIX applications on windows the barrier to move to a free *NIX would be much smaller.
But you cannot access Python programs through C.
Yes, you can. Python has a C API. The PyObject data structure is fully documented.
I was hoping that you could think outside the box a bit. Unfortunately not! My statement, It hasn’t been certified OSS ready if you understand me! was implying that making Mono the cornerstone of OSS development would be crazy until MS makes some promises.
I heard the quote on a ZDnet interview with Ballmer about a year ago. It was one of those interviews you watch over streaming media. So I don’t really think he was supposed to say what he did.
Anyway lets say he didn’t say that, which attitude is more likely to Ballmers. As Mono gains market share and takes MS market share away, will he:-
A) congratulate Mono
B) wait for the right time and try and destroy the very infrastructure that new OSS is built on.
Well I say that copying .Net gives MS too much ammunition. But I am with you on preferring a different solution.
Chris the point is as you put it, and many many people have put it, is that there are so many patents it is almost impossible to write anything without infringing. But don’t you think that in the battle for minds and in the courts it is going to look very bad for Mono when you get sued for patent infringement when you deliberately copied a technology.
I think the status quo is not to use .Net or Mono for that matter until MS has given assurances. Otherwise you are playing a game of Russian roulette with the most powerful software company. Microsoft is dealing the cards and gets to make most of the moves.
Call it FUD if you want, but FUD stands for FEAR UNCERTAINTY DOUBT which is excatly the situation MS has left us in!
Lastly I like the concept of the CIL, the unified framework, it seems better to me than anything else. But that is only one part of the equation.
CLI is also interesting in that other languages can be run on it, unlike the Java VM.
Oh really? That must be some great news. I guess you can compile this into clean CLI code then?
(parameterize ([current-namespace (make-namespace)])
(call-with-current-continuation k))
<chicken-little>The sky is falling, the sky is falling</chicken-little> – or in your case … the sky is going to fall one day…. maybe. But INAL so I’ll just sit atop my box and crow.
AndrewG:
“I think the status quo is not to use .Net or Mono for that matter until MS has given assurances. Otherwise you are playing a game of Russian roulette with the most powerful software company.”
hmmmm – not use .net or mono now. finished bashing mono and on to Micorosoft now
now that is a shocker.
In other news:
Another nice differentiating feature of .net and I’m sure in mono too is “custom attributes”. You don’t hear this enough as people list off many of the other differences.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cs…
(yaya – it’s a msdn link. so what.)
Actually the whole thing about .NET and Java is they still seem to be at the HYPE stage. I have yet to see any commercial
proprietary, or FOSS apps for ANY platform being built on either of them. Most desktop apps I see are still being built in C/C++ with some Pascal(usually Delphi), BASIC(Usually Visual Basic, PowerBASIC LibertyBASIC) and Python ones in the mix while most of the “web services” I see (mainly forums like this one and EBay) are developed in simple “scripting” languages like PHP, CGI/Pearl and CGI/Python. It just seems to me that NEITHER JAVA OR .NET/MONO are really making any headway against these time tested solutions and their “winning” is just market hype on the part of their advocates.
Ill believe it when I see commerical and FOSS APPS actually being produced on a large scale for the Java and .NET/MONO
“managed software” environments. My vote goes to Java if we do have to adopt a proprietary “managed software” platform on Linux. Microsoft has just proven itself too untrustworthy with its competition, customers and even its stockholders to base the future of Linux on ANY technology they ultimately created.
As for competition for GCC I see Sci Tech’s Open Watcom project providing it in the not too distant future. ;c)
Most programmers (especially game programmers from the late DOS game period) will remember that the original proprietary Watcom compilers on which this project was based were the fastest around for C/C++ programming.
s/INAL/IANAL
There has been a lot of talk about Mono helping people migrate from Windows to Linux. But the thing is the ECMA submission was set up specifically to make this hard and reverse the easy migration by leaving out Winforms etc.
Assuming that a developer is working primarily on one platform, then later decides to port. Working on Linux you will probably use GTK# for the GUI, which is cross platform and works well on both Linux and Windows.
Working on Windows you will probably use Winforms for the GUI. This is not part of the ECMA stuff, is tied to the way windows works, is covered by patents without any agreements for royalty free grants (as it is not part of ECMA) and while it is now being implemented by Portable.NET and Mono it is unlikely to ever work as well as on windows as it was not designed to be cross platform. Should Mono ever catch up then Microsoft can just add more features (no reason not to it’s their technology and not standarised after all) to Winforms forcing them to play catch up again.
So when porting going from Linux to Windows will work without problems, but going from Windows to Linux might not. Therefore the easier migration path is to Linux, but away from it. This is the same tactic that Microsoft attempted with their psuedo-java (embrace and extend) just that this time they get to do what they where going to anyway replacing Win32 with something decent to program with, and they can embrace and extend a linux technology without having to do any extra coding, as FOSS is doing the embracing while they do the extending. Very clever.
All the kids were faving about how great Windows.Forms is so I had to go and try it. I fired up my Visual Studio 2004 and select New -> Project -> Windows Forms .NET Project. Using the designer I decided “right, let’s put two combo boxes on a line”. So I did that, pressed “play” and Wow! Only 30 seconds later there it was. Then I resized the form. Hmm.. doesn’t stretch.. that’s pretty typical for Microsoft, after all, you usually cant even resize dialog boxes, but this is .NET man – Windows.Forms! Ya gotta be able to do simple layout rules in the designer right? So I had a look at this Panel control, that sounds reasonable. Nope, didn’t help. Let’s try this “dock” stuff.. Hmm.. that’ll let me pin one combo box to one side and one to the other.. oh wait, there’s this “fill” option in “dock”.. hmm, that’s pretty lame, just spread the entire combo box across the form and now its overlapping the other one. I must be too much of an old man, I’ll ask these 10 dudes around me who do Windows.Forms programming all day.
“Oh no, you can’t do that, you’ve gotta use code.”
“Why don’t you use a splitter?”
“No, he wants it so the two combo boxes are always the same width, half the form.”
“Yeah, you gotta do that in code, there’s no way to do that in the designer.”
At this point I’m a little disappointed. I mean Glade, the world’s most crapiest designer lets me put two widgets in a “hbox” widget which does exactly what I want. At this point I happened to notice that Visual Studio happens to have two combo boxes up the top when you’re editing a source file (one for globals and one for functions). So I actually unminimized Visual Studio (yeah, I know) and started resizing it. Well goly, as it turns out even Microsoft’s two combo boxes on a line don’t resize in any sensible way. The globals box always stays the same size (always too big) and the functions combo box gets the rest of the space (and is always too small, even when maximized).
So there ya go. It seems that most people who use Windows.Forms still have the “static layout” mindset that Microsoft has drilled into everyone who has ever had the misfortune of using their dialog designer. Well at least it’s better than Glade.
@nofknnerd (IP: —.dip0.t-ipconnect.de)
An operating that can’t speak NFS is completely useless.
About .NET and java
java in server mode is more than twice as fast as mono for raw data manipulation. mono still has a long way to go. The only thing I like about mono is GTK#, but SWT looks pretty promising. AWT and Swing blow, unfortunately.
You can do it in the IDE and it’s called Anchor.
What is visual Stuido 2004, and why are you using it if you are not a .Net programmer ?
Or are you proving a bad point using illegal software ?
I am a .Net Dev by trade, I’ve been programming for 15 years (ASM, C, C++, VB) in Windows and a bit of the old SQL under Unix, C# and the .Net framework are the best thing thats happened to me since sliced bread. Thats just MHO. You are free to love Java/Python/LISP if you so wish.
But, Say what you like about Patents and whatnot, Mono is the first tool that makes me want to start Programming under OSX or Linux, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. How bad is that for the OSS and Un*x movements ?
mono is the best thing that i ever seen on the linux
community for the past 3 years.
the real problem is some redhat programmers that hate
c# mono and gtk# because are most involved on java platform.
i hope that (in future ) gnome will support mono,so the redhat influence on this desktop will go out.
The fact that you have to try and legitimize it makes it suspect right off the bat for me.
I would love to know what systems ever got accepted without any kind of Legitimization ?
Not Windows, Certainly not Linux, not Java, not C, not C++, not .Net, not Apple.
I mean people were even arguing that K+R should write the Original Unix is C. Whats’ wrong with BCPL and ASM ?
So when porting going from Linux to Windows will work without problems, but going from Windows to Linux might not.
If someone create a nice plugin to VS.Net (which is very extensible BTW) that allows people to use GTK# in the form designer, you problem would be solved, wouldn’t it? Anyone planning to make a multi-platform solution would just have to remember to use the GTK# widgets instead of the Windows.Forms ones. That’s also a good business opportunity for companies creating alternative (cheaper) IDEs out there.
Anyway what Mono needs asap is an integrated programming environment like VS.Net, where you could do ASP.Net, form design and coding all in one place..that would be Linux’s greatest killer app in years (IMHO, of course)
The exact argument that I was making at JavaOne was precisely that many developers DON’T buy into Java yet. Mono should scare Sun because developers are deciding to change languages/middleware platforms and they are choosing Mono over Java. If Sun doesn’t start trying to understand why this is happening, they might as well shelve their entire marketing department.
Anyone planning to make a multi-platform solution would just have to remember to use the GTK# widgets instead of the Windows.Forms ones.
This would be prefectly easy I agree, I was thinking of when the project has gone beyond the planning stage and is in or beyond the implementation stage as if you design a program as cross platform it will be cross platform no matter how you build it.
For example an in house corporate development team is making some custom software currently they use Windows desktops but decide to look into the feasability of moving to Linux for the reduced cost/increased security or any of the other reasons we all know. First thing they are going to do is simply drop the assembly (as .NET assemblies are cross platform byte code) onto their Linux test machine with mono installed, it may not work correctly as the Mono Windows.Forms will almost certainly not be as feature complete as the Windows Windows.Forms. They will therefore conclude (correctly) that it will increase development time and therefore cost to switch to Linux as their deployment platform.
Going the other way a programme for Linux built with Mono and GTK# dropped onto a windows machine with GTK# installed will work exactly like the original version providing a smooth migration to Windows.
Oh I like your logic there.
“Gee, this technology can’t do everything. Even though it can do more than most existing technology, it must suck cause it can’t do everything. Therefore I must not use it.”
You best go hide now, there is as yet no technology that doesn’t have limitations. Thank you for your insightful comment pointing out the obvious. I
This would be prefectly easy I agree, I was thinking of when the project has gone beyond the planning stage and is in or beyond the implementation stage as if you design a program as cross platform it will be cross platform no matter how you build it.
I agree with you then.
The good news is that (at least around here) most of the enterprise apps (especially the .Net ones) are done in ASP.Net, which should be easy to move to Mono. At my company (a large telecom company) 80% or more of the internal apps are developed to run in the browser now, and the tendency is to be 100% one day, the advantages are numerous.
Sorry if I my statement,
“I think the status quo is not to use .Net or Mono for that matter un..”
misled you. If you want to program for Windows, then .Net is an excellent choice. I just don’t want to see history repeat itself. MS destroying a platform because the outwitted everyone else however underhandedly.
Oh I like your logic there.
“Gee, this technology can’t do everything. Even though it can do more than most existing technology, it must suck cause it can’t do everything. Therefore I must not use it.”
You best go hide now, there is as yet no technology that doesn’t have limitations. Thank you for your insightful comment pointing out the obvious. I
There actually is logic to that type of argument. Frequently the learning curve involved in moving from one system to another is steep enough that unless the other provides not only an improvement, but a compelling advantage, there’s no reason to switch.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If you want to know the reason why Mono is a bad idea, read this:
http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/2004/May
Even the mighty Icaza himselve couldn’t refute the points made.
Even the mighty Icaza himselve couldn’t refute the points made.
Actually, he did:
http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/archive/2004/May-20.html
I agree entirely, but that wasn’t what Daniel was saying.
All he did is snidely point out that the CLI can’t run ALL languages. I, of course, never said it could run all languages. I only said that it was interesting in that it
could run other languages (such as Java). How effective or usefull remains to be seen. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s interesting. I also never advocated that anyone change languages. If you are really good and compfortable with a given language, by all means keep using it.
That doesn’t have anything to do with people looking for languages better suited to their style or project though. The fact that mono exists at all should show people that there is some significant interest in C# and the CLI.
Yeah, Rod… I had read that blog as well.
I didn’t consider it to be a valid response to Seth’s points because he simply argued that it was because Seth worked for Redhat, which as a competitor to Novell, didn’t want to see MONO to succeed on a commercial basis.
However, if YOU see that as a valid argument (ie. name calling whilst sidestepping the main point) for using Mono, then I wait -with baited breath- for the day Microsoft throw it back in your face.
Waiting…
Not using Mono in any shape or form is not a blank waiver against patents. That means that even if you choose to stick to your beloved C, Python, C++ or anything else, for any new software you write, you are likely to infringe on someone else’s patents (or even the same ones that Mono could potentially infringe)(…) I just ask you that you take a step back, and for every instance of the word `Mono’ replace it with every major open source project today `gnu libc’, `linux kernel’, `Open Office’, `samba’, `x11′, `cairo’, `gtk+’, `qt’, `binutils’, `gcc’, gnome’, `qt’, `mozilla’, `my favorite file system’, use your imagination.
Does your foe have a patent to it? Or someone that can be acquired by your foe?
Do you have a good answer for that? If you don’t, you have much more reasons to wait.
If MS actually decide to “make a SCO”, they don’t need Mono, they have some 30.000 patents (and counting) and certainly a lot of those could be used against some piece of Linux code somewhere. So what should the OSS community do? go back to differential machines?
More people will be programming with .NET/Mono eventually than Java and Python combined. Let the Fudsters cry and whine all they want. They don’t influence any developers.