Mono 1.1.7 is out, more information here.
Mono 1.1.7 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Mono 1.1.7 is out, more information here.
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
does this version works on ubuntu 5.04?
i mean, the installer…
i tryed 1.1.6 and i got a error about glibc or something.
Novell still hasnt cleared up the patent issues related to Mono by working out any written agreements from MS. All is just hand waving and cheerleading
Try to use mono from ubuntu backports. It’s currently version 1.1.6 and works like a charm here.
@unused anonymous:
troll somewhere else please, the patent situation has already been discussed extensively and to claim that all is “just hand waving and cheerleading” simply shows that you don’t have a clue and are a pretty lame troll.
“claim that all is “just hand waving and cheerleading” simply shows that you don’t have a clue and are a pretty lame troll.”
Do you have any written agreements from MS on extensive amount of patents related to .NET?
Do you know that EMCA RAND policy is incompatible with Free and Open Source software?
Did you know even a royalty free patent is not the same as a patent grant?
I have 1.1.6 compiled on my laptop running Ubuntu 5.0.4. I even created debs using checkinstall. I was thinking about when I would find time to compile 1.1.7, but I do not foresee any problems. As long as you apt-get the devel packages for all things gnome and gtk and install bison and the build essentials packages, you should be good to go. Everything was a ./configure, make, make checkinstall away.
The solutions is really, really, really easy. Novell should stand up and provide indemnification. Anything other than that should be looked upon as extremely suspect and should result in the complete failure of Mono.
Does anybody know if it works better now on ppc? For the live of me I could never get beagle to run on ppc and most of the time it were mono issues that caused it to fail.
So any word on improved ppc support?
If Novell provides indemnification then it will be perceived by their clients that Novell is taking unnecessary risk with regard to the technology they use.
Additionally, Novell can’t indemnify Mono since Mono is not a Novell project. Sure, the primary contributers of Mono work at Novell, but since it’s open source, anyone who wants to download and compile it can. So, would Novell indemnify Mono users on RedHat systems? Probably not.
The patent issue has been debated to death on OSNews. Novell may find themselves in trouble further down the line and they may not. But indemnification is not the solution.
i have the universal repository, but i don’t see 1.1.6
There are no patent issues on a per item basis — the runtime, language spec, libraries for XML, DB and so on. The problem is MS has software patents on the interaction of various subsystems contained within .Net. THESE are the concerns that go unaddressed by the mono crowd.
Additionally, calling anything trolling because you don’t like it doesn’t make you smart, right, better or what have you. The fact of the matter is these concerns are brought up over and over because free-ness is a concern and many questions remain unanswered. The annoying thing is that tangentially related threads get the patent question raised when there shouldn’t be polluted with off-topic conversations.
It’s in staging:
deb http://backports.ubuntuforums.org/backports hoary-backports-staging main universe multiverse restricted
put this into your /etc/apt/source.list
found here:
http://beaglewiki.org/index.php/UbuntuInstall
Try looking here http://backports.ubuntuforums.org for instructions on adding backports to your apt-get repos.
1.1.7 has the new IO system in place – apparently provides a 3x speed improvement on all IO tasks (i.e. beagle and xsp according to the changelog).
Keep up the good work all
About .Net/Mono/novell/ms patent stuff? Please inlighten me!
One of the things I’m most excited to see is the support for Visual Basic .NET starting to mature. Like it or not, VB is one of the things that made Windows such a popular platform to develop for: it was easy in Basic. Mono gives Linux (or Mac) guys a similar platform to develop on for all those in-house apps. That’s where the war will be won or lost.
This is a good overview:
http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/mono
I dont think that Microsoft not will bother Novell at all at this sage. .Net has got a lot of publisity in the press lately but it’s not the success Microsoft hoped. Agree with me! .Net is not a success in the Application landscape. Commercial players have not adapted it yet. ASP.Net is on the other hand a success. A lot of websites has stated using it. So Microsoft is just glad for the help they can get to spreed the usage of .Net. It’s when/if .Net is a success Novell should be worried about patent issues.
correction: I dont think that Microsoft will bother Novell at all at this stage.
Although this is 1.1.6 and Beagle 0.9 an easy way to get things installed only using apt-get sources to check out Beagle is here:
http://www.beaglewiki.org/index.php/UbuntuInstall
I must admit that I am scared about the legality of MONO myself. I plan to write GNOME applications using MONO but I keep staying away from learning it because it could get bust one day and then you spent time learning something that you can not use afterwards.
troll somewhere else please, the patent situation has already been discussed extensively and to claim that all is “just hand waving and cheerleading” simply shows that you don’t have a clue and are a pretty lame troll.
Well, if only that were true.
Besides, it’s not patents that are the sole issue as they’re a problem for everyone. It is the, let’s face it, pretty clever way in which Microsoft has created standards that everyone can adhere to. There are no cleanroom implementations, everyone is adhering to the standards so there is no ambiguity. Are they licensed, are they not licensed, what does RAND mean exactly in this case? Those are things that need to be explored if Mono is to be adopted by open source developers, and more widely.
There are no patent issues on a per item basis — the runtime, language spec, libraries for XML, DB and so on. The problem is MS has software patents on the interaction of various subsystems contained within .Net. THESE are the concerns that go unaddressed by the mono crowd.
No actually, that’s a misconception. The real issue is how the core standards and any patents have been licensed via RAND etc., or haven’t been or continue not to be as the case may be, simply because there’s no ambiguity there. Microsoft does have patents on how .Net’s core works. You either adhere to the ECMA stuff or not, and Mono clearly does. It’s not something like a cleanroom Java implementation. Is it Java, or is it not Java? Who knows?
The patenting of the namespaces ASP.Net, ADO.Net etc. is really a non-issue. People use each other’s namespaces in programming all the time and there’s a whole lot of ambiguity. The only problem there is any trademarking of names like ASP or ADO, but then all you do is rename them to something creative.
Like it or not, VB is one of the things that made Windows such a popular platform to develop for: it was easy in Basic.
1. It was easy because of efficient for the time RAD tools. Nowadays, the tools for VB and C# are the same. VB.NET is C# translated into a cluttered and clumsy syntax.
2. VB.NET is *not* VB [as people knew it].
mono isnt going anywhere today, tomorrow, a year, or even five years from now. with the current state of things, it wouldnt make any sense for ms. ten years ago, things will probably be different. and if linux is still around, and if mono is still around, and if mono is used substancially in core projects, then mono could be a weapon used against it. thats a whole ton of ifs, and a very big timeframe, so dont let this keep you from using the language. and even if mono goes bust, c# is a good thing to have on your resume 😉
probably the most ass backwards language ive written stuff in. consistantly gives me the feeling that the wrong way is the only way to do things, and pretty much every halfway competant developer i know feels the same way. the one and only thing that makes it good is top knotch rad ide, and the fact that the language was designed around that rad ide.
my company is one of the ones that jumped on the vb bandwagon for non-trivial stuff. basically got a few talented people to write a ton of pl/sql stored procs and a db framework, then they hired a truckload of developers straight out of school, most of who couldnt get a job anywhere else and worked for next to nothing. development costs were miniscule, but the product is god awful, and 95% of the blame lies in the fact that the platform wasnt designed to support it, it was designed for rapid application development.
anyways, not to bash rad tools, but there are alwas tradeoffs with such things. i love perl, but hate it with a passion when i need to update a five hundred+ line script. fast as all hell for small projects, but doesnt scale too well unless your insanely careful, at which point why use perl? we’ve already got toolkit bindings for virtually everything under the sun, i would like to see a rad python a hell of alot more then vb in linux.
Faster IO and more compatibility with Windows.Forms is a good thing. I hope the Mono team keep up the good work and continue making Mono better. I’d love to be able to distribute some of my code to people using non-Microsoft oses.
As to people who complain how Microsoft could and will crush Mono at any moment, that’s crazy talk. I find it hard to find any way MS would make any money from doing so. Especially since their giving the source code away for free.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3A1C93FA-7…
Not only can you download it, but they even give install instructions for OS X and FreeBSD.
@bleyz
2. VB.NET is *not* VB [as people knew it].
That’s true, but for the majority of old skool VB dudes it’ll will be easier to pick up than C#.
@mattb
VB is just as good a language as any other. Joel on Software makes some good arguments for the use of VB.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000006.html
As always, your mileage may vary.
The moment MS attacks MONO is the moment MONO becomes a monster that nothing can stop. Look at DVDCSS for an example of just what can happen if they tried that.
Besides, I still haven’t heard about what methods MS or the US government could use to limit the use or distribution of MONO.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, bring it on!
Thought this was cool:
http://sonance.aaronbock.net/
Mono has proven to be what Linux needed most. A platform to rapidly develop very cool and stable programs.
I use just about every mono app simply because they are the best around for the gnome desktop. That says a lot considering each is also the newest in its respective category too.
Given that I’ve always disliked the iTunes interface, I’m not particularly dazzled by the prospect of using one running on a memory-hungry platform running on a mediocre GC.
GStreamer is a really nice framework, though.
The moment MS attacks MONO is the moment MONO becomes a monster that nothing can stop…
You dont seem to grasp the real problem. Microsoft will probably not sue individual users, it will go after corporate / commercial developers. The goal will be to create an air so full of fear, that only *official* CLR implementations (ie. from MS) will be used
Actually a better strategy to use (for MS) would be to let Mono continue to grow for the next 4 or 5 years, and of course, by extension .NET will grow as well.
After a sufficient base has settled on the .NET / Mono bandwagon launch a massive lawsuit against Novell. Don’t target anyone else, but make sure that Novell doesnt survive.
The result would be two-fold; 1 – they get another Server player off the market, and 2 – they force all those entrenched Mono products to switch to .Net.
All of this is why the best way forward for “these types of apps” is either clean-room Java (maybe one day OSS-Java) or Python-GTK
Why is this bad for me?
it will go after corporate / commercial developers. The goal will be to create an air so full of fear, that only *official* CLR implementations (ie. from MS) will be used
It does not seem like we need Microsoft to spread fear, the community is doing quite well spreading fear in advance.
Then try own muine which is also written in C# and takes a pretty dramatic shift when it comes to how a user interacts with a music program.
I like itunes and actually like rhythmbox but it seems like deveopment is too slow…
The “community” as you euphemistically put it is now reduced to morons who can’t attack Mono on its technical merits, but to the usual FUD campaign of patents.
Anyway, David Adams must be smoking the rock if he didn’t mod down that 2nd post – or just doesn’t give a shit anymore. Might as well throw out the mod system all together.
Mono has always been surounded by debate. First it was strategically bad for Linux or open source, now it is being attacked with patent (lies) FUD. 🙂
The IT director receives MS emails which read almost identical in tone to the troll on these threads. I think I smell a …….
I keep staying away from learning it because it could get bust one day and then you spent time learning something that you can not use afterwards.
It’s not as if you gotta go through brain surgery and pull out 4 teeth to learn Mono, don’t worry..it should have enough space in your brain to be learned in a couple of days, even for an average programmer.
If the reason why you don’t want to learn thing is because it might become useless someday, then you should stick to Fortran, seems to be the only one hanging around for more than 4 decades.
If you don’t want to learn new stuff, at least get a better excuse
IMHO at this moment there is not any comparable technology in linux. If mono project will fail (and nobody can create better thing under linux with larger user base then .NET) the linux will dead. The existing linux technology is competitive with Visual Basic (python), Delphi (Kylix/Lazarus), MFC (wxWidgets, Qt). But against with .NET only the java platform exitst – and IMHO in this game the .NET will the winner. And in this case the linux will slowly dead – with or without patents.
And IMHO the M$ never will sue the Mono project directly.
Why ?
1. Because this is not too good advertisment for the company. Nobody love SCO – and it is not too profitable for them.
2. Mono is increase of the acceptance of .NET, because it is an independent and multiplatform implementation of .NET. And M$ is frequently refer to mono in .NET related courses.
Hey,
Btw, thanks so much for stepping up and correcting some of the statements that have been made here over the months. Drop me an email sometime ([email protected])
Miguel.
It is obvious that Gnome needs a better developer framework to survive. Personally I would like to see GNUStep as the core foundation in the future of Gnome.
IMHO the good developer framework
– Processor independent. Nobody can create program from every processor architecture.
– Multilanguage with common library. The most of coders have a favorite language. C#, Java, PHP, Python, Object Pascal, Visual Basic.
– Support for large scale of OS functions. Database acces (for many RDBMS servers /mysql, postgresql, firebird, oracle, etc/).
– Printing support at least API level.
– Easy way to create multi-tier applications.
– Good development environment with RAD tools if possible.
At this moment IMHO the .NET is the closest for this. The second is the java – but in this race the second is never gain award…
Replacing GNOME’s foundation with something less complete that ties it to Objective-C would helpful how, exactly?
Many people have written stuff about that in the future Microsoft will sue MONO. I myself do not think so since Microsoft has standardised the main parts of the .NET. That is much more than what Sun has done with Java, and you still dont see Sun suing IBM, or open source communities developing their own type of Java.
I think the problem would be that Microsoft is so far ahead and has such a power that MONO is always going to be several steps behind. For example when microsoft ships longhorn and its new version of .NET it would take MONO quiet a while to be up in par with .NET and by that time Microsoft has come with a new major release of .NET.
But still I think there is a place for MONO. It could be a platform for companies like Adobe so to run their apps on different platforms.
Just my thoughts!
Yes, Microsoft will always be one step ahead, but as Miguel has always said, it doesn’t matter. ECMA 334 and 335 are sufficient specs to develop a great platform without worrying about the ADO.NET ASP.NET winforms stuff. And that has been done. Mono is an incredible platform. And you osnews folks know i’m no FOSS fanboy. Mono is the best chance to have a killer server/desktop platform to compete and co-exist with Microsoft.
Listen, we’ve been hearing about Parrot and other Universal platforms for years now. They’ve not coming to fruition. I know linux from the server perspective for the past 7 years. All Linux for our company. http://www.jbmelectronics.com.
I know Linux, I know open source, and I know the shortcoming s of the open source desktop. Mono is the best hope.
“I myself do not think so since Microsoft has standardised the main parts of the .NET”
1) ECMA standard has a RAND policy incompatible with open source software
2) Even an royalty free implementation isnt equivalent to a written patent grant which is what Novell is supposed to getting from Microsoft
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2004-March/msg004…
“As previously reported we (Novell) are working on the legal items
ourselves, and will have an official statement when we are done.
Miguel.”
So where is the statement. it has more than a year
What a joke.
Is unused.com some kind of redhat proxy server?
Obviously this isn’t your usual groupthink idiot. This clown thinks he will have some influence on developer decisions.
Hello! McFly. You mean nothing. Mono is already huge in the Gnome community. You fail it.
Most rational people understand good tech and also understand that Microsoft will be around for Long, Long time.
I await “the Parrot” to smoke alll the other runtimes out of the water…uhh…like today?
I can understand that Miguel and others get really frustrated that the patent situation is brought up everytime Mono is mentioned here.
But just calling people who are worried because of the patent situation surrounding Mono morons like some people here do, does not solve the situation either. The only way to stop the patent worries is, to present an official statement from Microsoft where they give a patent grant to Mono.
If the Mono developers are not willing or able to do this, then it is just irresponsible to employ Mono in large scale projects, even if it is the best technology available on Linux today.
Yes, Microsoft will always be one step ahead, but as Miguel has always said, it doesn’t matter. ECMA 334 and 335 are sufficient specs to develop a great platform without worrying about the ADO.NET
Read previous posts as to why the ECMA standards are a potential problem, and how Microsoft has been clever with creating standards to remove any ambiguity as to different cleanroom implementations.
Jumping up and down and shouting “Oh, oh, but they’re standards” doesn’t amount to a very small mole hill. Calling people “rabid trolls” is a very nice sentiment, but that doesn’t address any of the issues at hand that have been previously stated.
Don’t keep pointing to these ECMA standards as some sort of proof that things are somehow open. They don’t mean a thing. Microsoft can make the position of those standards untenable any time it feels like it to the point where the ECMA will have to withdraw them. That means the end to any reasonable licensing terms. The fact that this can happen at all should ring alarm bells, and should the ECMA withdraw them at any point in the future Microsoft is under no obligation to Novell, Gnome or the open source community who have used them. Be in no doubt .Net, and everything they contributed to the ECMA, is Microsoft’s tech and they view it as such. They like to go through the motions of appearing open.
It is impossible for open source developers to simply get legal counsel on these matters. And no one can base anything off what someone heard at a conference three (now four) years ago.
”
IMHO at this moment there is not any comparable technology in linux. If mono project will fail (and nobody can create better thing under linux with larger user base then .NET) the linux will dead. The existing linux technology is competitive with Visual Basic (python), Delphi (Kylix/Lazarus), MFC (wxWidgets, Qt). But against with .NET only the java platform exitst – and IMHO in this game the .NET will the winner. And in this case the linux will slowly dead – with or without patents.
”
the linux will dead? I’m assuming you mean then Linux will be dead.
Yep, definately right. If Mono fails, then the thousands upon thousands of volunteer developers will pack their bags and go home. Gotcha.
Obviously this isn’t your usual groupthink idiot. This clown thinks he will have some influence on developer decisions.
There are certainly people using Mono to develop Gnome applications, but you’re rather deluded if you think that the presence of a few Mono/Gnome applications and shouting “It’s already huge!” is going to put a new coat of paint over any of the issues already explained.
When it comes down to it, Mono will still present a problem for Gnome developers at its heart, no matter how many applications are written with it.
Nice try, but it doesn’t answer any of the questions highlighted.
Hello! McFly. You mean nothing.
Likewise.
Mono is already huge in the Gnome community.
Doesn’t mean a thing. All people are going to do currently is develop applications on top of Gnome that are not actually part of Gnome at its core. There is no way Mono can possibly be adopted officially by Gnome in any way shape or form for reasons already stated.
Most rational people understand good tech and also understand that Microsoft will be around for Long, Long time.
What has getting down on your knees, submitting to Microsoft and saying “Yes, we know you’re going to be around forever” got to do with anything?
You’ve rather exposed yourself there.
I await “the Parrot” to smoke alll the other runtimes out of the water…uhh…like today?
Try taking a reasonably sized .Net application and porting it to Mono. I wouldn’t call it ready, no matter what many people like to think.
Red Hat have a reasonably right idea with their Java implementation and they have a very good IDE in Eclipse to make it happen. It will take them a bit longer to get done though, because Red Hat are into the habit of realistically funding their projects
.
Maybe it would have been a good idea to invest in Parrot and other solutions, or taking the concepts that are good about about Microsoft’s CLR and implementing them in something new for the community.
There’s no reason that copying and using Microsoft’s stuff directly is ever a good idea, and history is littered with the corpses of people that have tried.
Let’s say that MS does sue Novell. What damages can they claim were inflicted by a free product that wishes to be compatible with their technology, which in turn allows more people to develop for Windows as well as Linux?
What if there is a settlement? Novell licenses the tech and they’re good to go. Any other business can do the same. Now they can use a technology (Mono) to be compatible with both Windows and Linux rather than just Windows (.Net/C#). I still don’t see the problem.
And like Miguel said, the FUD is coming exclusively from the FOSS camp. If you keep saying Mono will fail, than it will fail, self-fulfilled prophecy style. Those in favor of Mono need to keep being louder than those against Mono. And to those developing Mono apps for GNOME: Keep going! The more Mono apps, the more likely GNOME will use Mono in the future!
Let’s say that MS does sue Novell. What damages can they claim were inflicted by a free product that wishes to be compatible with their technology, which in turn allows more people to develop for Windows as well as Linux?
damages arnt the issue, liscence fees and royalties are, as they make something gpl incompatible.
What if there is a settlement? Novell licenses the tech and they’re good to go. Any other business can do the same. Now they can use a technology (Mono) to be compatible with both Windows and Linux rather than just Windows (.Net/C#). I still don’t see the problem.
the only way that would work is if novell got a gpl compatible liscence from ms.
And like Miguel said, the FUD is coming exclusively from the FOSS camp. If you keep saying Mono will fail, than it will fail, self-fulfilled prophecy style.
Thats a good point. All it will take is novell or microsoft to make ANY legally binding statement whatsoever that this is safe to use. using a platform with an ambigious liscence is irresponsible at best. not only that, we are talking about the intellectual property of a company who regularily breaks the law to kill competition, AND who has *explicitly* said they will use their patent portfolio as their weapon against opensource.
Those in favor of Mono need to keep being louder than those against Mono.
they are… much louder.
And to those developing Mono apps for GNOME: Keep going! The more Mono apps, the more likely GNOME will use Mono in the future!
…and by doing so, ensure that if gnome ever becomes a threat to microsoft, they will be able to easily kill it.
http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/mono
Why would Microsoft would sue developers after mono gets “big”? I wonder how that would play out in the rest of the world? In Europe? In China? How about in the US with the DOJ/State Governments watching their business practices?
Because of their size/dominant market position Microsoft probably has to be more careful with the perception of what they do than say Apple.
Seems more likely the best strategy (if they were going to do such a thing) would be to stamp mono out now before things really get going: backlash would be less of an issue, they could tie-up Novell (who is still in recovery mode) in litigation, slow down Linux development, spread more credible FUD far and wide BEFORE business managers make purchasing/dev. commitments – all just in time for the Longhorn release.
Just my 2 cents tho..
“I myself do not think so since Microsoft has standardised the main parts of the .NET. That is much more than what Sun has done with Java, and you still dont see Sun suing IBM, or open source communities developing their own type of Java.”
Your an idiot.
1.) Full patent grant
2.) Access to the Java sourcecode
3.) Access to a huge amount of documentation regarding the implementation of a Java
4.) Being able to submit bug fixes
5.) Requests/wishlists
6.) Free daily builds for download
Call me when MS offers those with .NET
It does not seem like we need Microsoft to spread fear, the community is doing quite well spreading fear in advance.
Miguel:
First off, let me say that from a purely technical perspective I admire Mono and think that in some ways its better than Java. Mono is a testament to not only the power of open-source, but also your skills as a developer.
However, my concern over licensing / patent issues is not just nay-saying. The company I work for sells a specialized ‘system’ to large financial companies.
This system is now written in Java with some Python throw in . The typical sale of our ‘system’ is in the $500k – 1m range (USD).
However attractive Mono may be to us (and it is), we *cannot* permit ourselves to be held hostage in the uncertainity surronding Mono. Obviously, our customers are very sensitive to licensing issues – to a fault perhaps.
Now if we would port to C#, do you think we would choose MS .NET or Mono?
I suppose some would say that MS .NET is for business and Mono is for where “lawsuits don’t matter”. If in fact that winds up being the case, then Mono will limp along as a cheap imitation when it could be so much more.
I know you grow tired of hearing the same complaints over and over, but these complaints aren’t going away. In fact the bigger Mono gets, the more appropriate these complaints are going to be.
The average Mono developer seems to point to the EMCA and brush everything else aside. You are not doing the project or your company any favors by continuing to let this dark cloud hang over this project.
I wonder why people still think of mono as a compatibility choice. There is almost nothing serious working on both nix and win based on mono (nor .net). .net 2.0 will be a drastically different runtime than 1.1 so this will get worst.
(but this does not mean mono is useless, it is a nice choice if you think of it as an independent tool)
And I wonder why people still think of the CLR as a cross language runtime. You actually should have seen that everything running on the CLR is, well, C#.
VB6 could not be made run on the CLR (http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2005/03/21/8041.aspx)
JScript.net is a simple class based language (compare with the prototype OO of ecmascript)
Scheme interpreters targeting the CLR still never implemented call/cc.
IronPython is actually slower than CPython on some hardwares +mono(and anyway is is a magnitude slower than C# on any implementation).
(this does not mean it is a bad runtime, just not the ultimate one).
Also, I hope people will stop complaining about mono as a trojan from microsoft. We know we can rely on big companies being friendly anas long as we don’t actually use their own tools (although the BitKeeper tale could have thought us something)
Then this seems to all center around GPL compatibility or incompatibility then, not potential economic damages.
There are a few sides to this, the MS-patented .Net/C# stuff, the danger of the ECMA standard being revoked (thereby releasing MS from the by-laws of the ECMA, as well as any promises or agreements made regarding the standard)
First, the patented stuff will be worked around, it won’t ever be implimented in Mono from what I’ve read on the Mono website. So no problems with the GPL here.
As for the rest of the unpatented stuff that is part of the C# standard, how can MS require licenses for it? By getting the standard revoked? And so what? If it’s not patented, how can MS require license fees?
Another good question: How would MS go about getting the ECMA and the ISO standards revoke?
It seems to me that the purpose of Mono is NOT to have compatibility with .Net, but rather to make a good dev platform for free software (as said on the Mono website). It seems that Mono is just meant to be similar (or exactly the same as) C#, but if C3 stopped being a standard I don’t think it would effect Mono development. Mono would simply become an implimentation unto itself, independent of MS, and would be what others have suggested be done: Make a new language not related to Java or C#/.Net.
As a professional developer, I’ve watched the debate concerning Mono with great interest over the years. However the post written by Michael Thaler sums it up better than any argument I’ve ever seen. So much in fact I think this statement needs to be emphasized again and again everytime this argument comes up:
Michael Thaler: “The only way to stop the patent worries is, to present an official statement from Microsoft where they give a patent grant to Mono. If the Mono developers are not willing or able to do this, then it is just irresponsible to employ Mono in large scale projects, even if it is the best technology available on Linux today.”
Personally, until this happens, I will NEVER use Mono nor use any application that uses Mono. If this eventually includes Gnome one day, then I’ll stop using Gnome.
I used to have a tremendous amount of respect for Miguel de Icaza. In fact since we are of similar age, I always viewed him as a personal hero of mine. However without an official statement from Microsoft granting patent rights to Mono, I believe he is now doing much more harm than good.
I’m not all that eloquent, I think I need to be a bit more clear.
There are two pieces to the C# puzzle.
Standard Patented-C# and Standard Unpatented-C#.
Mono is modeled after SU-C# and impliments SU-C#. SP-C# will remain unimplimented in Mono. If both the SP-C# and SU-C#, that is, Microsoft gets the standard revoked, then Mono will still be an implimentation of SU-C#, even without a standard in existence.
Did I get that all right? I know I made up the SP-C# and SU-C# terms, but I needed to make the distinction clear.
> It seems that Mono is just meant to be similar (or exactly
> the same as) C#, but if C3 stopped being a standard I don’t
> think it would effect Mono development.
There’s a difference between Official Truth (what the CEO says) and Ground Truth (what employees say among themselves around the water cooler or through emails).
The Official truth is that MS compatibility is irrelevant. The Ground Truth says ASP.NET, Winforms, ADO.net and other Microsoft non-ECMA standards are almost as important as (perhaps more important than) Mono’s GNOME support because the key source of Mono programmers come from the Win32 space.
Mono *may* survive if Microsoft prevented ASP.NET, Winforms, and ADO.net from being used, and Mono were forced to rely solely on GNOME technologies, but that’s far from certain. This is expecially true for GNOME projects that use MS technology (e.g. ADO.NET) instead of the comparible GNOME technology (e.g. GdaSharp) since that would require a rewrite.
Personally, I’m happy that Mono exists. Without it, GCJ would still be years away from reaching even 1.0 compatibility and Parrot (the common runtime for Perl/Python/Ruby/…) wouldn’t exist. I wouldn’t want to be critically dependent on any application that was only available on Mono, but I don’t see a problem with using a Mono app where viable non-Mono alternatives exist. Microsoft decides to play hard-ball, you can always switch.
Thanks for the reasonable, truthful, and objective analysis of Mono and competing technologies.
A breath of fresh air around here, when we get so much stank.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is well aware of Mono and even with their deep pockets it would be hard to convince a judge why they didn’t try a “cease and desist” order before hand for “APIS” that are beyond ecma 334 and 335.
Personally, Mono is the only hope for real widespread growth of X11 desktops. Don’t pull a McNeally and fight Bill on his own grounds. You’ll just lose. And why? Microsoft isn’t bad. Only in the demented, moronic, FSF world is Microsoft a bad guy.
Goto Plan9 and see some smart, intelligent, thoughtful people that work at Microsoft. Sheesh
If we shouldn’t use Mono because of patents, then don’t we shouldn’t use Linux either.
When I said that, I was thinking in terms of the legality of it, as well as GPL-compatibility. The unpatented pieces of C# are up for grabs and that is what Mono is using, which leaves them unprohibited whether or not C# is a standard.
Yep, definately right. If Mono fails, then the thousands upon thousands of volunteer developers will pack their bags and go home. Gotcha
If the .NET based systems will far better then linux the users will pack their bags and go home. And if nobody use linux, nobody will develop for linux.
I get the impression that a lot of people infatuated with the CLR are people that missed the Java bandwagon in the ’90s and suddenly find themselves sold on the idea of a slightly better JVM with a slightly better Java as its primary language. Port every major tool or framework from Java to C# to feel like you’re accomplishing something, or create bindings to some libraries, or basically just construct a lot of simple busy-work and you’re set. It’s certainly easier than writing hard applications and more novel than wading through the codebase of something else to improve its integration, UI, footprint, or the like.
please dont jump on the mono bandwagon
gnome needs a true superior language (python)
the first thing to do is to block beagle hype
why we do not reimplement it into python ?
🙂
This (Python) is brought up pretty often, but it’s nonsense. You have to understand that Python _is_ already a viable language to write Gnome software in. Lots of software is written in Python, Red Hat is using it, Ubuntu is pushing it. The last time it was discussed on the mailinglist, consensus seemed to be that Python application would be allowed to go into the desktop release.
This does not however eliminate the need for a runtime environment like Mono or Java. Python is not the best tool for everything (and neither is C). If Python would be the answer to all problems, then no software would be written with Gtk# or JavaGnome, because PyGtk is already mature and there is no controversy around it.