Submitted by A Mono developer responds to a request for “a calm presentation of why Mono is desirable, why it is not a threat, and why it should be included in Ubuntu by default” answering the three questions individually, then attempting to address general anti-Mono sentiment.
One . . . Two . . . Three . . . Now!
Expect furious rage from zealots around the globe
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“Expect furious rage from zealots around the globe
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Why is it that most “mono haters” present reasoned arguments but mono supporters always reply with personal attacks and condescending dismissals? Not liking what you like doesn’t make someone a zealot or a hater. Calling someone that when they’ve tried to engage in reasonable debate *does* make *you* a zealot and a hater however.
1) Mono “haters” *never* say mono sucks (although they do sometimes say it is slow which is true). They do sometimes ask the question, why do we need mono? For some reason though the reasonable and objective mono fans love to bring this up as if anyone was debating that anyway (this is known as a straw man argument, commonly used by irrational zealots to win arguments when they have no logical basis for their position)
2) Mono “haters” always bring up the fact that MS has patents on large portions of mono that have are *not* under ecma standardization. Reasonable mono fans always reply by saying that that mono is covered by ecma standardization and calling you a zealot (this is known as redirecting the question and not answering the question, also a favorite of zealots with no logical basis for their position)
3) Mono “haters” always bring up the fact that ecma standardization does not preclude MS from chargin RAND fees or requiring licensing. See 2) for response from fans.
You know who Mono fans remind me of? Republicans in the US. Cling angrily to what you want, don’t think about it. Respond to any criticism with character assassination, personal attacks and subterfuge. And just to make sure label any people who disagree with you as personally vested zealots. Very slick. Very crappy. Very old.
Edited 2009-06-12 17:34 UTC
Actually, no. If you did not get the joke, leave it be.
What I meant to say was that every time this topic comes, the discussion turns into a useless and particularly nasty flamewar filled with personal attacks and all. And I’ve seen this at least on dozen mailing lists. (For references see for instance the current “discussion” on Ubuntu’s devel-discuss: the polite political discussion culture is quite far from it — “zealotism” is actually the only good word to describe the thread.)
So far the discussion here at OSnews has been amazingly civil (see however further below). Thank you all for it and keep it that way.
Edited 2009-06-12 17:49 UTC
The zealots seem to be mainly anti-zealots on the other side. The pragmatists are either using Mono if it is useful to them or not worrying about it if it isn’t…
With Google making Python faster (Unladen swallow) why should you include Mono apps and get in a lot of trouble because a lot of users do not want Mono.(And a lot of people in the industry agree that is has its dangers. Red Hat, Groklaw,RMS etc)
All modern Linux distros ship Python and have a lot of python apps. No need for another runtime that adds a lot of resource usage.
So for Gnome just use C/C++,Python,Vala for the default packages.
BTW: Comparing old C to C# is a little lame.
I totally have to agree with this reply. I’ve no problem with a better technology, but I’ve yet to see a convincing case for Mono.
And even though I’m by no means a legal expert, to me it seems the only people that do not perceive any legal problems with Mono, are those developing Mono. Even from Microsoft itself I haven’t seen any clear statement or guarantees concerning the legal status of Mono.
I’ve yet to see a convincing case for Mono.
I’d rewrite your sentence in a different way: I’ve yet to find interesting apps written in mono. Had I needed to install an app which used mono, I’d have installed it, even if I don’t like it (I like objective-C and I don’t have any objective-c programs installed. I mean, languages don’t matter, it doesn’t matter if the language is good or not, apps and frameworks is what matters).
It doesn’t seem to be many mono killer apps (and yes, I’ve seen this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29#Software_d… and this http://mono-project.com/Companies_Using_Mono). Monodevelop? I’d rather use eclipse. Tomboy? Its a f–king note-taking app, seriously, i couldn’t care less.
The one remotely interesting mono apps for me seem to be:
-Banshee: it is nice….compared with the other crappy gnome players. But I got used to amarok long time ago when banshee didn’t exist and I’m not going back.
-F-spot: I once tried to use it and it was buggy as hell, and I didn’t need a photo manager anyway so i deleted it.
-Gnome-Do: I just don’t care. Normal panels and app launchers do the job for me.
-Beagle…I don’t use desktop search tools (I end up not using them and they eate resources). But when I tested it, it ate most of my RAM. No surprising that ubuntu ditched it.
Those are the most interesting apps…and they aren’t very interesting at all (I mean, they are useful, but not critical – it’s not goint to be the year of the linux desktop thanks to them. And I can easily find replacements of all of them that some times are even better – they are not “killer apps”). It’s not surprising that distros are not deciding to take mono by default just for those .
And the same goes for all the .NET applications that I could use with mono. My XP system still works without .NET support installed. I don’t know any interesting apps, and even if I did, they are propietary most of the time and they are windows-dependent in one or another way. As far as I know, all the interesting things are happening in the web, not in the desktop. And I have yet to find a site that requires me to use silverlight.
So, mono developers, here is a hint for you: Build interesting apps. Like…dunno…rewrite Evolution in C#? Or Gimp? Write an openoffice replacement? A IM app from the ground up, including network implementations? Hint: KDE has software equivalent to evolution, gimp and openoffice, and their own IM app (and they are quite good at it), and they wrote it ALL in old and dirty C++. And it works. So, if C# is supposed to be so powerful and so much better, why is that most of the apps written for mono are so uninteresting?
Edited 2009-06-12 17:22 UTC
Maybe you would use interesting Mono apps, but how many other people would as well? I’ve considered using C# and GTK to write desktop apps for Linux, but the main thing that puts me off is the thought that my users would not like the Mono dependency.
That is a good reply to the article. He states that the desktop team of ubuntu just focused on the best of breed applications. As a result, two of those happened to use Mono. Thus the mono run-time was included.
But Microsoft have made *explicit* statements about how they believe Linux is ‘patent-encumbered’. If you are ready to ignore that as nonsense why state a higher case for Mono which Microsoft *need* and have never claimed is patent encumbered?
And don’t forget the elephant in the kitchen called Java.
I’m both GNOME user and .NET developer in my normal computer usage life (so I’m based as anyone here).
What python does not solve, is bringing a good OSS tool (not VIM) to bring code completion and full with tutorials. I am not here to say that Python is a hard to learn language, is quite the reverse.
But, really, I don’t know much tools that compare with Eclipse, NetBeans or Visual Studio. We talk for application that have more than 10k lines and you want fast prototyping, an working debugging, and to be possible to create an application in both your free time and faster for your work. Is not about speed, and solving python speed will be a bonus but not a solution.
The point of the Mono developer response seems valid to me. Not python speed is the issue, the python applications are. This developer said: should be Mono bundled? And his response was: No. Mono is only a dependency which solves easier some problems for devels that are harder elsewhere.
I implement in C# something that really solves an issue in C++ in 1/10 lines because of “syntactic sugar”. Working with C/glib is a tedious task and adding the build time (a C# program compiles much faster than a C/C++ counterpart, at least when templates are involved), the developers are not so happy to achieve.
Where Vala is not a solution? Vala three months from past generate for some cases wrong code that duplicate calls in your code! Vala is not yet proven and tested. Also, Vala have no good debugger integration, bad code completion, only two IDEs (one is valaide and the other one is an extension for MonoDevelop), both offering less than beta support for this language. Also, the compiling time is an issue of Vala, as the generated code in C is pretty large.
Vala will need at least one more year to get mature. When in this time Mono will (probably) achieve dynamic language support and the generational garbage collector, will be really much multi-paradigm (technologically) than many languages around. Vala is a substitute for purists for now, that hate mono, but they have to admit it that C# syntax is too lovely to renounce so easy to it.
Edited 2009-06-12 15:45 UTC
There are numerous Python apps on many Linux desktops that have thousands of lines of code.
The Mono devs dissing Python isn`t really something new.
Google engineers think Python rocks and so do a lot of Gnome devs (Jokosher, Zeitgeist, Pitivi etc.)
And you can use Eclipse for Python development. (Visual studio on Linux not so much
)
What makes you think Mono devs dis Python? All they say is that C# on Mono is a lot faster than Python. I’m a core Python developer and it is hard to argue with that…
There is even an implementation of Python that runs on Mono – IronPython.
Vala irks me. It seems to me that the Vala developers have an irrational hate for C++, and so they decided to reinvent it their way, but of course with worse performance and fewer features.
I have to agree. Python is pretty neat, we’ve done some projects at work with it, but the tools really suck. There is no good IDE with code completion, and the documentation is not great for developers. I spend way more time trying to figure out how to do things in Python than I ever do in C++/Qt.
I call BS on that. Maybe base C++ with just the standard library, but no one in their right mind uses that. Use a toolkit like Qt and your C++ code will be basically the same size as the equivalent C# code.
No kidding. It’s a mystery to me why people still bother with that at all.
Yep. I thought Vala was stupid to start with, but got yelled at for doubting this awesome new language that would solve all our woes. Code generators mostly suck, that’s why they’re only used in limited settings. I have yet to see a complete code generating language that is actually satisfactory for real applications. An expert developer will always create better code manually, and other languages have way more utility to learn. Don’t even bother putting Vala on your resume.
Eiffel compiler???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_(programming_language)
“Although there is no direct connection between Eiffel and C, many Eiffel compilers except one (Visual Eiffel) output C source code as an intermediate language, to submit to a C compiler, for optimizing and portability.”
Edited 2009-06-12 16:29 UTC
He said “real applications”. How many apps are written in eiffel?
“Eiffel is used in the finance, aerospace, health-care, video-gaming, and other industries as a development platform.”
Sounds real enough to me.
I made up a new language just recently, called Tokyo Tower. It’s used in finance, aerospace, health-care, video-gaming, and other industries as a development platform. Is that real enough for you?
Not familiar with the compiler, but the fact that Eiffel is an extremely obscure language used in very few “real applications” supports my point more than it detracts from it.
IIRC, the first C++ implementations where code generators that created C code. I dare hope that, maybe in five or ten years, someone will write an actual straight-to-binary Vala compiler. Vala looks like it could be a great language, if given time to mature.
Honestly, I think you might be missing just a hair about how Open Source projects develop. Unlike comercial projects, they’re not usually complete or stable when they’re first released – and they keep their “unstable development version” tag for a while. Projects like to reveal themselves early, so they can generate interest, pick up developers and gather feedback. Vala is not now what it will eventually be: give it time. Eventually, either the project will die off or, if it’s found to have some merit, it will be refined: I have great confidence in the ability of the GTK community to generate great software, if given time.
I’m quite familiar with how OSS works. I’m just saying, a new language whose primary purpose is to make Gnome development easier has no future, and will only serve to isolate the Gnome development community. It has no big advantage over other existing languages like C#, Java, or C++ (of course it has some perks, but it also has downsides like the others, so it’s a wash). If you’re going to promote a new language you better have some amazing things no one else can do, or have the marketing clout of Microsoft. Vala has neither, so it will remain an insignificant language, just like D or any of the other upstarts.
Edited 2009-06-12 16:59 UTC
It’s not a wash, it’s task-specific. I think that it probably can make GTK development easier than C/glib development or QT/C++ development. Also, I kinda doubt that it can isolate the Gnome community more than C/glib already does: it’s my impression that a lot of developers favor KDE for no greater reason than C++ is their main development language, and they don’t think C++ support in GTK is adequate. A good object-oriented language for GTK development can’t be a bad thing.
(And, apologies for my patronizing tone.)
Edited 2009-06-12 17:10 UTC
First, nobody needs to promote Vala. The fact that you keep returning to promotion and advertisement implies you really aren’t that familiar with the OSS model. As a project, it’ll grow organically (just as it already has). No advertisements needed.
Also, Vala *does* have a lot of perks that make it more than just another niche language. With no additional runtime, it runs at the speed of C with a syntax like C#. It can also link directly to C code, no bindings necessary.
But hey, if you don’t like it, don’t use it.
Does it have bindings to Qt4 and other stuff, I don’t like GNOME and I don’t like Mono.
Does it have bindings to Qt4 and other stuff, I don’t like GNOME and I don’t like Mono.
He did say that no bindings are necessary, so I assume you can link directly from Vala-apps to anything you wish.
You can link to C, not to C++. So yes, a binding would be necessary for Qt. Which means the previous poster is wrong.
Well, using C linkage, at least. Since Vala code gets translated into C code and compiled as C, you can use anything with a C interface with Vala. C++ libraries, I don’t know: does QT have usable C bindings?
There would be no point using something like Vala with qt, since you can just use normal C++ compiler. Vala exists because C development sucks, and apparently C++ doesn’t exist in the Gnome developers mental map (judging by the relative unpopularity of gtkmm).
Vala Code is converted to C code, and compiled as C code. Anything with C bindings can be used natively in Vala, since Vala code ultimately ends up as C code.
Speaking solely for myself, C++ is a terrible, wretched, impenetrable language. I can easily understand why people want to avoid it. It’s kinda my suspicion, perhaps a simple and stupid one, that a large part of the reason that C# exists in the Windows world is because C++ is such a fugly language.
C++ is actually quite ok. It’s the frameworks we’ve often used C++ with that suck. I’d recommend looking at Qt now that it’s LGPL (and we have Qt Creator) – it actually makes you wonder why we need Mono or Java in the first place.
C++ will actually be gaining quite a few nice features with the new standard that cut the cap b/w C++ and Java/C# even further.
Well, the Windows programming community needed a language like Java for windows app programming that is not Java. It makes sense, and developers pretty much hated the old way (MFC & C++). I don’t think anyone is debating whether .net is better than MFC.
“I have to agree. Python is pretty neat, we’ve done some projects at work with it, but the tools really suck. There is no good IDE with code completion, and the documentation is not great for developers. I spend way more time trying to figure out how to do things in Python than I ever do in C++/Qt.”
Wing has great auto-complete for Python. I’ve always found the Python documentation very good – particularly compared to many open-source projects. The documentation for pyqt may suck though – I’ve never used it.
http://www.qtsoftware.com/products/developer-tools
http://www.kdevelop.org/
http://www.kdevelop.org/index.html?filename=3.5/screenshots.html
http://www.kdevelop.org/graphics/screenshots/3.5/codecompl.png
http://www.kdevelop.org/graphics/screenshots/3.5/codecomplbases.png
http://www.kdevelop.org/index.html?filename=3.5/features.html#Integ…
Enjoy.
And, what about Eric, or even Komodo?
http://eric-ide.python-projects.org/
http://www.activestate.com/komodo/
Edited 2009-06-12 16:23 UTC
I used Eric. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t have code completion. (Not real code completion anyway, it will remember properties and methods you’ve used before, but it doesn’t actually inspect the class to figure out what is available).
Non-free, so I haven’t tried it. I heard it was good, but hey, tools for other languages are free, so I don’t really feel like paying for a Python IDE. Qt/Python doesn’t give me enough advantages over Qt/C++ to justify that cost.
Komodo Edit is free.
-Ad
More screenshots (Eclipse CDT)
http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/eclipsei…
I like Qt! Really!
This does not make Mono to not be a good development environment on Linux/Gnome part mostly. Also, C++ in general, and Qt which is based on it, have pretty big compiling time and as much as the application grows, also a big linking time. How much? Depends… I work on an application (opensource, but is not related with GNOME) that compiles on an atom based cpu in around 1 minute. The start of application take another 25 seconds. But if initial build take 1 minute, the subsequent builds take around 10 seconds each. The entire project have 20 components, with 650 files (those are only cs files). If you will think twice, you will see that C# and C++ are for different usages. In C++ matter too much the user speed, that can be taken every MHz of your CPU, in C# matters mostly to get fastest development response in adding features and have a pretty friendly development experience and code (no accuse on C++ anyway by this).
For stating as diferences, that for some may mean mostly irrelevant:
C++ have no first class code refactor tools for the moment. The single one working is Rename in Eclipse CDT. But for me seems only scratching the surface. Also, code completion works all right till, you use Eclipse in a high templated code of C/GLib presented previously, where macros will make CTags from CDT to fail in most cases.
http://www.cython.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cython
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyco
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shed_Skin
Eclipse has PyDev, which has: code completion (as well as it can be done to dynamically typed languages), everything one expects from a proper code editor, integrated lint, integrated unit testing, integrated debugger, and more: http://pydev.sourceforge.net/features.html
I’m no expert (or a great programmer) by any means and I wrote a simple JPEG encoder/decoder from scratch, just for fun, in Python in just two days, and it was under 10k lines of code. Why write more when you can do it in less? Nothing so far has beaten the prototyping capability I find in Python. It’s almost like writing working pseudo code. Documentation? The documentation on internet is vast, comprehensive and easy to read and browse.
Now if you had commented on Python being dynamically typed and thus slower and harder to predict, there being some old legacy cruft in 2.6, I would’ve understood. Computer Language Shootout shows Python being about 30 times slower on median and using half the memory C# uses. In some cases Python is twice faster as C# (regex-dna). But these are micro-benchmarks so they’ve only marginally useful.
WinForms.NET in Visual Studio editor though, beats (like completely slaughters) anything Python has in the GUI department in my experience, but this is no fault of the Python language. Just don’t start generalizing from that single data-point.
I completely disagree. “Old C” is great, and I am a proponent of it in a way, but I’ve got to say: writing GUI software is much, much easier with an object-oriented language. C really isn’t well suited to GUI work – GTK is nice, but it can be a real verbose pain too. If C# is as clean and easy as I hear, then it’s probably a much more appropriate language for Gnome/GTK development than C/C++.
Actually, on that note, I hate C++, so Mono just might keep me Gnome/get me interested in GTK development (i.e. outside of the little bit that I already do at work, with C).
Did you actually RTFA?
In post he compares the patent situation for C and C#. No language comparison anywhere.
I did read the article, it didn’t connect for me that he was referring to the comparison of origins in the article, rather then in general.
had a look at Qt? i cannot write C++ code, except with the Qt lib as it feels like Java.
C# also feels like Java (the same way DOS feels like bash — thanks Microsoft for doing some thing slightly different while basically trying to deliver the same)
/ vs \
main() vs Main()
etc, etc, etc.. in Redmond they call it innovation.
p.s.: i like this idea of a C# to Java compiler.
p.p.s: Python seems a more natural choise for gnome
p.p.p.s: Miguel: you are killing gnome, if that is what you want you deserve a raise
p.p.p.p.s: wasn’t gnome started because kde wasn’t ‘free’ enough — i can’t hold my laugh. this is ridiculous.
final verdict: mono go! far far away, and do not try to poison the free innovation.
This “old C” is still very robust in some software engineering, robotics, automation and control systems areas. I can’t imagine living without C. Of course it doesn’t mean that I use C for all purposes. C is good for some applications just like C# is good for others. There are no universal solutions… And definitely C# and Mono wouldn’t be anything universal. Personally, what I like in GNU/Linux is diversity, so why not to have Mono by default? Moreover, it’s still a better option than Java in many aspects.
And we shouldn’t compare C to C#. It’s a better idea to compare C# to Java and CLR to JVM in my opinion.
I would prefer to make my own choices, thank you, I certainly don’t need you to do it for me.
Oh, and as a user, I want mono, moonlight, and asp.net and python, and perl and php. I’ll try to use the best tool for the job, not what you think I want, or need
Okay, I may sound like a fanboy, but what about the others.. Perl, Ruby, Tcl and maybe even Javascript or Lua?
And what about Java (or any other JVM language). I’m not a .NET, Java or Mono fan, but for me .NET always looked like Microsofts version of Java/JVM.
Oh and not to forget it: Parrot
Okay, it isn’t as far as Mono is right now, but for me it seems to better fit into the Unixworld, than Java or Mono do. From its goals and design, portability and other features it _could_ be the future of VMs. Especially, because of its portability (which is yet higher, than any others) and because its targeted/has better support for dynamic languages.
Oh, of course its not a pure Unix thing and also runs well on different versions of Windows.
Sorry for getting off-topic with Parrot, but since it is about the question “What should we have by default?” Parrot seems to fill the gap, because one could replace ruby, python and perl (and others) with it.
Why does the Mono project has such a big echo, while no one speaks about all the other VMs (Parrot, JVM, llvm, …)? And what about other implementations of Python or Ruby?
Mono shouldn’t be included by default. But the latest version should be available in the repository. Mono is at version 2.4 and the last version available from repository is 2.0.1-4. But! Packaging Mono seems horible. I’ve looked at the source it seem heavily RPM oriented :S
Heh: if you want the version in the repository to be less than six months behind the current release version, don’t use Debian. I like Debian, I love Apt, but the big reason I stopped using it was because the versions of software in the repositories where ancient. (And Unstable is, well, unstable. And sometimes not really very up-to-date itself!)
Face it, Now that the Java JVM is totally 100% GPLv2 Open Source there is ZERO reason to use mono. Java and the JVM are now guaranteed to provide you a development platform that can run ANY place that YOU choose to run it and will always be free to do whatever you want with forever.
The JVM can already run Python(jpython) FASTER than regular python and ruby faster than native ruby(jruby).
And if you don’t want to do full java, then checkout Groovy, it ROCKS. http://groovy.codehaus.org/
The JVM is a fantastic VM. And now that its open source its being worked on by the community to better support more dynamic languages like Perl.
And if you made the huge mistake of choosing .NET over Java, then there are solutions for that too. http://www.mainsoft.com/solutions/prof_svcs_j2ee.aspx
PS. Miguel is a lying piece of shit f–ktard. http://www.osnews.com/story/21586/Mono_Moonlight_Patent_Encumbered_…
Edited 2009-06-12 16:19 UTC
Despite of the fact that someone modded the first comment down, I knew I could say this at the end of the day: I told you so!
“PS. Miguel is a lying piece of shit f–ktard.”
You just proved the author’s point:
“To this, I offer a quote from Thomas Jefferson – “Ridicule is he only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon themâ€. Demands to remove Mono from a default Ubuntu system are not based on any rational suggestions – there are no packagers offering superior replacements, only people demanding that because in their personal ill-informed opinion everyone will be sued to death, that Mono applications should be purged. This is, in short, software terrorism – demanding a change in someone else’s policy and telling them they are not Free to make their own choices, based on personal politics. Rational minds can dissent on questions of Mono, but until there are adequate replacements for Mono applications, complete with functional migration path, the choice is simple – make Linux suck more by moving to an inferior default application set, or “make do†with Mono. It should be noted that people with rather more to lose than random anonymous people on web forums – such as Mark Shuttleworth – have said on record multiple times that they don’t have any such fears. I would personally support a move from any Mono-based application to a non-Mono-based one, with demonstrable technical superioriority.
The article is excellent, well written, rational, well informed, etc. It makes a strong case for the use of Mono, when it enables to developers to provide “best of breed applications”, as the author points out with Tomboy and F-spot.
To those offering other IDEs as alternatives to MonoDevelop – those don’t offer code completion, sorry.
As a day to day developer, I can attest that code completion / intellisense / code-suggest (whatever we want to call it) is a huge, huge time saver.
Personally, I prefer Java with Swing and Netbeans, or SWT and Eclipse, to Mono/GTK#/MonoDevelop.
But with that said, Mono/GTK#/MonoDevelop are all excellent. And I’m worried about patents or legal threats regarding Mono, at all. There are many more elements in Linux distros that have far greater potential legal threat than Mono.
“And I’m worried about patents or legal threats regarding Mono, at all. There are many more elements in Linux distros that have far greater potential legal threat than Mono.”
I’m not so sure. To quote another article on the matter:
“Of course, there are potentially thousands of patent issues affecting free software and we cannot run scared. Once we know about particular patent infringements in free software, they can be resolved. But there’s a difference between implementing software which might turn out to infringe on some patents and deliberately writing free software using a proprietary framework.”
Other pieces of the linux stack may or may not infringe. They are unknowns. On the other hand, Mono is an implementation of a *known* proprietary technology. The odds of Mono being a problem are far greater than some vague unknown “other element.”
Sorry…calling a liar a liar is NOT proving anything but the truth.
But calling a liar a “piece of shit f–ktard”…
I can think of a few reasons, one of which being platform integration. Sure, java is portable, but it’s not well integrated into its host platforms. For example, SWT is easy to use, sure, but the results are hideous (however functional), and they stand out visually. Or, writing command-line java programs is extremely annoying, especially if you start putting them in packages (./myapp? No. java org.myorg.mypackage.myclass, if you’re lucky and your classpath is set up correctly and everything’s where it’s supposed to be and and and.)
I’m not dissing Java, I’m just saying, it has its weak points, some of which prevent it from doing Mono’s job.
Actually Java, like C# and most (but not all) of the interpreted languages, is hardly portable. It is kind of quasi-portability that many wants us to believe as portability.
Have you ever tried to use Java on some more exotic operating system? And by exotic I mean something that even Linux was few years back. How long it took for Java to run on AMD64? Have you ever tried to run Java on MIPS or ARM?
As an old-timer I can not but wonder the current generation of programmers. I doubt many so-called programmers even know that such things as endianness exists. Just to give an example. I believe this shows also in the quality of code (or more likely, the lack of it). There is always room for C and C+++. There are still very sound reasons why parties like GNU recommend only C for their own projects.
That used to be a problem because Java was controlled by SUN and you could only run Java an whatever platforms Sun choose to support because you could only get your binary JVM’s from them. So if Sun didn’t compile and provide it, it did not exist for that platform.
Those days are gone… Java is now 100% GPL2 open source and available for anyone to compile and develop for any platform they want themselves.
So your argument is completely a thing of the past.
Actually, I believe that the fact that Java is now GPL’ed hardly matters in relation to its portability.
The point is that the whole Java suite is extremely complex piece of software. It is extremely complex to even package something like JDK. (You might ask how trivial it was to reach a working state from someone involved in, say, the OpenJDK project.) And finally, it is extremely hard to port something that is extremely complex to another architecture.
Sadly, as I said above, this seems to apply to most (but not all!) interpreted languages, hence my sarcastic term of “pseudo-portability”.
Complex because it is big, but face it, java is mostly a small microkernel the vm and the compiler and tools, and a vast toolset which does not even have to be compiled for other systems (with exceptions to some jni bindings in the graphical subsystems)
so the amount of things having to be ported to new platforms is not that big, and probably smaller than most applications there are.
ya sun have many jvm for different cpu…
don’t forget many not official jvm don’t implement all spec…
For fairness you should compare Gtk# with java-gnome.
http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/
I dislike Mono. However, I disagree that it is a waste of time. It’s like Samba. I wish we didn’t need it, but I thank the $DEITIES that we have it. In the case of Mono, not so much as with Samba. But Mono is there for compatibility when we need it to compete in that arena. It’s there when my customers (or maybe your family members) need to be able to view silverlight content. And it is there to entice current Windows programmers over to our world.
I absolutely do not like seeing it used for any sort of infrastructure that we really care about. And I do not like seeing existing FOSS authors deciding to switch to it. Although I certainly feel that it is their right to do so, just as it is my right to choose not to use their applications when they do.
Mono and Samba fill very similar roles. But we tend to give the Samba guys a break because we’re more used to their situation.
Edited 2009-06-12 17:31 UTC
Apart from those pesky Kodak patents, I hope Sun has a licence for them that allow distribution of the code or else it’ll be in the same situation as Mono is supposed to be in.
Those Kodak patents likely apply to .NET as much as Java.
And the OpenJDK team has pretty much coded around all of the previously encumbered code in SUN’s Java…as far as I know the SNMP stuff is the only part left to have a new fully open source implementation rebuilt.
They’ve worked around the third party licensed stuff, the Kodak patents where fairly fundamental. to the way Java works and can’t be worked around.
Your post is a waste of time and space.
I completely agree.
As a scientific and commercial software developer for 20 years I’d simply say that Java rocks and is better than C# or Mono. For example Java either runs on, or can be made to run on (GCJ) just about any platform. From teeny JStamps and Android phones all the way to Big Iron. I’ve had the privilege of working on systems of all scales.
If someone comes out and says that Java is slow then that is a huge indication they haven’t actually written anything in Java for a long time or used a modern JVM. The graphics are done in hardware with DirectX or GLSL shaders and the JVM is now often faster than C and nearly as fast as Fortran (according to an INRIA study – you know, the French dudes doing scientific supercomputing where cycle differences mean hours or days of delay).
Ok, C# may have a slightly more elegant syntax (accessor and mutators) but has downsides as well. People whinge about Java’s strict package to directory mapping but I bet you these people have never tried to maintain a Mono mess from a 3rd party (which our company did recently) where you have to understand the entire source base at once to figure out where any part id defined. So, for a little syntactic sugar you’re willing to give up true platform independence? Well you are a fool then.
Yes, the patent issue has *still* not been resolved after all these years. With Java the patent grant for compatible implementations is right there in the usage license grant.
Oh yeah, implementations. So for Java we have 100% or near 100% implementation from: Sun, IBM, GNU GCJ+Classpath, Kaffe and a few experimental projects.
For C# we have: Microsoft (Windows and BSD Rotor only) and a partial implementation in Mono. Hmmm, single supplier dependency is never a good thing.
When you look at this C#/Mono looks good for application compatibility with legacy operating system (that is Windows) but is a very poor choice for new development that must work across a lot of system and devices (Java works on the desktop as well as all parts of the very lucrative Enterprise market).
Given the unresolved patent issue on .NET technologies free software should be dependent on it. Sure, for optional use yes, but not as part of the Core.
In short, if you’re serious about the software you are building for multiple operating systems (this is OSNews after all, not Windows User magazine) then simply choose Java rather than C#. Java isn’t perfect by any means but the syntactic sugar in C# is good but simply doesn’t compensate for the downsides of .NET.
Ruby can be fast without JVM or Mono, go check the new native Ruby 1.9 VM.
It is OK for single threaded apps due to a similar GIL that exists in CPython. Hopefully the MacRuby folks could find a solution.
-Ad
C# is much nicer than Java. 🙂
Getters and setters, no operator overloading, brain-dead generics, no closures. No thanks.
I’ve read the articles (original request and this reply) and also the comments.
The comments to this article are complaining about:
The package is out of date (2.0.x vs 2.4). The source also heavily favors rpm.
Response: These are issues that the package maintainer should deal with. That isn’t the language’s fault. How can source favor a packaging format anyways?
—-
That Google is making python faster and that python is included with distros by default… Also that “There are numerous Python apps on many Linux desktops that have thousands of lines of code”.
I’m not even sure what this person’s point is as a response to the original article. /bin/sh and /usr/bin/perl are also included… so why do we even need python? Oh.. does it do some things better than what came before it? Yes. And that is why some people developed applications using it. What is the problem with another set of libraries/language being available in addition to python? Are the language features that mono brings to the table “better” or more positively received than some python features? I’m sure that some developers would say yes.
—-
It is obvious that some people are here just to push Python as the end-all be-all… and for your needs it may be the perfect language. That’s fine… But that wasn’t the point of the article.
The main point as to the reasons for some portions of mono being included were to fulfill the requirements from two applications – Two applications that were found to be the best for the role they filled. I do not see any responses saying “Python Application-X is better than Tomboy because it can do x-y-z and is more stable and uses less memory”. They can’t and aren’t… and that’s sad.
Nuclear weapons are not a threat because we have them too? this is not a good way to defend Mono, There is a risk, What if OIN just disappear 10 years from today and we based important parts of our OSS on Mono?
In ~10 years, any supposed patents on .Net will have expired, as well as the majority of OIN’s currently useful patents.
Gee, I hope you’re not using Firefox or Samba or Wine or Dosbox or listen to MP3’s or use any of the other of countless applications that may (or actually do) infringe on patents held by MS or other companies.
Realistically how important things will ever be written in mono, and how hard will it be to replace them.
Let’s say that 10 years down the road all the core GNOME apps are written in Mono and all of a sudden Microsoft comes up with an ironclad legal argument that forces all distros to remove mono by their next release. This seems like a reasonable worst case scenario. How much effect would the really have on OSS?
Personally I think it would be very little. Distros would drop Gnome for a release cycle and only ship KDE/XFCE/whatever other non-gnome desktop is around in 10 years time. The Gnome team spend the next 6 month re-writing their important mono bits in some other language and repackage. Distros would pick up this new Gnome and the gnome team would spend the next release cycle making sure everything works just as well as it did before they removed mono. All in all a minor inconvenience for a few developers and users, but no real damage done.
The other issue is that MS doesn’t have to be the one to attack on the patent front. Based on past history of the use of third parties for lots of things, does anybody not think that a third party might hold a currently unknown patent on mono/.net ip? This third party could then sue MS as well as some other big Linux/mono end users/distributors. MS avoids the nuclear issue and plays victim and settles, as they have plenty of cash.
Mono users on the other hand . . . well they are out of luck. MS now can points to this incident saying see, we told Linux can’t protect you but we can. The PHB won’t take a chance again on this linux stuff. . .
MS grins and the chairs in Ballmer’s office breath a little easier.
BTW I don’t own a tin foil cap . . . 8^)
The only risk to Mono is the same risk there is to Parrot, Linux or indeed any major project.
Mono is .Net (plus)
It’s actually a better .Net, because the Mono and Monodevelop platform and tools provide existing .Net developers a way of creating true cross platform applications. I guess the alternative is to shun all Microsoft developers… but why do that? I guess we might not want them to use Linux, we might not want them to use IronPython, we might not want them to consider using open source licenses… perhaps we really do not want these kind of things for them.
Maybe they are evil.
I know there are some folks at Microsoft that do NOT like Mono. Why? For one thing, it makes a set of .Net classes available APART from the restricted use set offered by Microsoft. That means that .Net developers that were prevented from developing or using certain calls on certain classes of hardware, can now do so. Also, there is that whole concept that some Microsoft devotees might LIKE the open source “evil” stuff that we’re trying desperately to shield them from. They might end up preferring a Linux distro, for example, instead of a Windows based platform for their development.
So… it’s up to us. If we work really hard we can put up more walls and barricades to keep Microsoft developers safe and sound developing proprietary software for proprietary OS’s. Who needs em… right??
After all, open source is a disease…. with time, we can kill it. If we’re willing to work hard at it. Long live Microsoft proprietary .Net, death to anything that might sway them away from that!!! Death to open source… oops… well, at least for Microsoft users and developers….
Edited 2009-06-12 17:13 UTC
Mono is better than .NET in that it gives some platform independence. One way it sucks in that it is not 100% compatible with the Microsoft platform (this is of course a Microsoft strategy seen before).
Development time is short and money is always an issue. Don’t waste your time with Mono; either choose Microsoft C#.NET (which I don’t actually recommend) or move to a development environment that will work compatibly on Windows *and* on other operating systems (like any of the compatible versions of Java, which I do recommend, or even python, ruby etc).
Mono will never be even “nearly 100%” compatible with the .NET platform libraries (thanks to Microsoft’s strategy). So don’t waste your time with it.
One of Mono’s strengths is that it exposes some functionality specific to the OS it’s running on. This is intentional, I think, a significant difference from Java, and both a negative and a positive. While it does make mono less portable, it also makes it possible to leverage features specific to the environment in which mono is running, and thereby to integrate mono into the host environment in a way that is more difficult in Java.
Very good point.
Though for me personally, portability is everything since I’m required to work on a lot of different platforms (and versions of platforms) on a regular basis. If you are only working on a limited range of platforms (eg. the desktop for a specific version of Windows) then being non-portable for the sake of a few whizzy features is fine, if you are working out on client sites and on lots of different systems then it isn’t worth it.
I agree that Mono can’t play catchup 100% (just like OpenOffice, wine, etc. with regards to full compatibility). But, what if the Mono platform got traction as a reasonable dev platform. Maybe then, it becomes the preferred .Net, even if it’s a bit different (since it’s both more than .Net and less than .Net as you pointed out).
That would be very nice but it’s just not going to happen. If it did I’d be the first person to shut up about Mono.
But let’s get real. Simply look at history. For example, when Borland produced better compilers, IDE and libraries (The Object Windows Library [OWL] was so far ahead of crappy MFC it wasn’t funny, and in fact, far ahead of most alternatives like wxWindows in terms of ease-of-use etc). Microsoft delayed licensing of MFC support to Borland. This cut off Borland’s “air” for long enough that Visual Studio took over. It certainly wasn’t because Visual Studio was better (it wasn’t at the time). Such things have happened numerous other times with technology that has threatened Microsoft (both to competitors and partners). The wrath of unkempt geeks is hardly a deterrent to them doing such a thing.
Do you not think this would not happen to Mono if it ever became the preferred .NET platform? Of course it would, it is within Microsoft’s DNA and they can’t help themselves but to do it (despite some of the open minded people starting to work there, there are still the same layers of pointy-haired bosses calling the shots). They don’t have to do it heavy handedly either, just rapid changes to the platform, delays in publishing specs and FUD would be enough to make Mono fall behind that it would never be a Windows developer’s first choice.
So, that is why I wonder why people persist with Mono when they can have 100% open source and patent free Java apps that will also work on Linux, Windows, OS X, Android, etc etc. The performance of .NET is not better than Java and is usually worse (which is why Microsoft’s .NET terms of use prohibited benchmarking). Sure, Java may have slightly inconvenient syntax some times (getters/setters) but does that really make it worth switching to “slightly incompatible with MS.NET libraries and under a patent FUD cloud” Mono for this syntactic sugar? I know it doesn’t make any strategic sense to me to choose Mono over Java – once you’re down coding in the trenches other things make more difference to development time (especially on very large projects) then these marketing bullet-point items. In short, forget .NET use Java.
Remember, it is not the technology itself that matters, it is who has *control* over your strategic platforms (you, or some other company that has their own interests at heart).
Edited 2009-06-15 23:03 UTC
What are you even talking about??
The open source community routinely goes out of its way to accommodate Windows. Fire up XP and marvel at how Ruby, Python, Perl, Java, and almost any other language runs great on Windows.
Face it, the OSS community has long been extending its hand to Windows-based developers. OSS has nothing to gain, though, by attracting those developers who say “I’ll use Linux (and open source) only if I can bring my Windows with me.” A volunteer-run community doesn’t need to waste its resources begging for unwilling users.
So you’re saying that it’s WRONG to try to get more open source apps (or non-Windows lure) because of something .Net-like? Seems to be that you’re agreeing with my point more than disagreeing. That’s really all I’m pointing out. The more that people see outside of the world of Microsoft, the better off they are. So, if Mono helps do that… I’m fine.
it would make nearly everybody happy if mono and mono apps just weren’t part of a default install. given the controversy, i can’t imagine why that would be such a horrible thing.
You’ve made this exact point before and both times I felt like it was a good point. However I realize that my reaction to your comment assumes that the mono advocates are nothing more than a vocal minority. It is always important to quantify the interested by figuring out the total number of interested individuals versus the number specifically advocating for mono’s inclusions. My intuition tells me this would be a *very* small yet vocal minority but until that assessment is done, who knows. Maybe people who don’t want mono are a very small vocal minority? Then maybe those people (including me) should just accept defeat and shut up.
the truth is, the mono issue is off most users’ radar completely. both sides of the issue are small and vocal minorities. but, i tend to err on the side of caution.
i refuse to ‘just accept defeat’. mostly because it’s more effective to just pack up and pick another distro.
The main argument is that there are some very nice apps written against mono, and by not including mono you cannot include those apps and arguably get a lesser desktop experience. If this is “horrible” or not is of course up for debate.
I know I would be less happy with my Linux desktop if I couldn’t have Gnome-Do for example.
well, gnome-do isn’t part of the default install of any major distro. but, of course, you can still install it. i’m not advocating a necessary removal of mono from repositories… just from default install. if you want to install a mono app, fine. mono can be pulled in as a dependency.
the only two apps that currently are being used to justify mono in a default install of many distros are f-spot and tomboy. these two apps are not critical apps, and have perfectly acceptable alternatives.
tomboy and f-spot are fairly niche applications, and their inclusion absolutely does NOT justify including such controversial software as a default. and now with the emergence of gnote, there really is no excuse.
The really sad thing is that had Miguel and his group invested as much time and effort into python or Java, just imagine how amazingly well those languages would be for developing gnome? They are good even now. Especially with regard to IDE development. And for what? Something that is roughly as good as Java and Python? Total waste of effort, massive missed opportunity to advance gnome development, and created major divisions within the gnome community. Sad.
I will answer with one user answer: I use Gnome Do, F-Spot, Tomboy, and Banshee daily. Without them, I don’t know if I’d use Gnome at all. None of the C/C++/Python/etc alternatives I’ve tried have been nearly as nice.
Thank you so much for this post. I face Mono FUD every time I mention any of the products above. In my life Mono has only ever been an extremely positive force, and I can’t imagine its any more of a patent risk than every other piece of free software. Hell I “illegally†use ffmpeg every day, and I would guess most Mono haters do as well. Not sure why they aren’t scared of patents in one case (ffmpeg) where there have already been legal threats, and quaking in their boots over Mono which as you stated is just implementing an international standard.
(FWIW I’m a Python web developer who has been using Debian & Ubuntu as my sole OS for a few years now.)
Thanks for your hard work on Mono! Its definitely *very* appreciated!
Please pick the sad thing…
ffmpeg is a media player plugin (one of many), not a full platform upon which an entire ecosystem of software may depend. There’s a massive difference between the two.
You don’t build a castle on a foundation of sand.
ffmpeg is a media player plugin (one of many), not a full platform upon which an entire ecosystem of software may depend.
Spurious argument. If ffmpeg is affected with a patent attack for a proprietary media format, all those other codecs supporting it are in the kitty as well.
You tell me how usefull a GNU/Linux desktop is without support for proprietary formats. If codecs would be impossible to get into the distro’s (legal or illegal), no one except RMS would use desktop GNU/Linux. Vorbis and Theora don’t carry us far.
How many fundamental GUI patents are infringed? How many shady patents rest on VM framworks in general, including Java? Our beloved Linux kernel is said to be infinging 235 patents. Why do we build our FOSS desktop on quicksand?
Not really a spurious argument, unless someone holds a patent on all media now. There are a few applications that rely on ffmpeg, but it does not define an entire ecosystem of software. Besides, it would take a lot of codec patent holders acting at once to torpedo media on alternative platforms. There are a lot of formats out there, and new ones emerging every week. The world is larger than ffmpeg.
This is a prime example of assuming the rest of the world is just like you. My desktop is pretty “usefull” without ffmpeg or flash, but then again, I do a lot of software development and reading. My co-workers (and most people who work a lot) have a similar lack of need for proprietary media codecs.
The patents you’re talking about have loads of prior art and are widely acknowledged to pose very little threat to FOSS. The “235 patents” claim was an idiotic move by Balmer, since he then refused to name the patents in question (which puts him on difficult legal footing if MS ever tried to sue).
Mono is different, though, in that Microsoft more than likely does have decent claims on the technology that they developed.
More fundamental than all the patent nonsense, though, is the fact that going with Mono means hitching your wagon to a platform developed and controlled by a private entity with no stake in helping (and, indeed, a lot to gain by hurting) FOSS. Unless the Mono team starts employing a lot more people, they’re going to be forced to play a reactionary role, something independent frameworks are not required to do.
Someone else who sees the die hard FLOSS zealot bull for what it is. So many of them throw around the word freedom without understanding what freedom is – they’re all for freedom so long as you don’t disagree with them… News flash, freedom is about the ability to CHOOSE, and if I CHOOSE to use a open system based on a closed one, or GOD FORBID a closed one, that’s my choice.
Freedom means you may just have to tolerate things you don’t like. Closed source falls into that category.
When organizations like the FSF talk about ‘freedoms’ and then have members make endless rants about how closed source needs to be ‘stamped out’, load down all of their allegedly ‘free as in freedom’ with ambiguous loopholes in contract law for the sole purpose of circumventing other existing laws and in many cases try to restrict what you can use something that is given away (free as in beer) for – well, does the term ‘snake oil’ ring a bell.
But what does one expect from a social movement started over the sour grapes of someone who didn’t get a kick-back from code he gave away when it was used in an a commercially successful product. Hey stupid, you gave it away!
The entire ‘free society’ reeks of the same pinko commie nonsense you’d expect at a hippy rock-fest… Fight the man, down with the evil corporations… What a crock.
Edited 2009-06-12 20:14 UTC
Hope your got your lurlz with your completely 1950’s Joe McCarthy rant.
Freedom is the ability to make a choice, that is correct.
If that choice involves denying freedom to others then it is something that should be avoided. For example, you could say that one ought to have the choice to stab red-necks or homosexuals because you find their presence offensive. That that is the unbounded freedom you are proposing. Freedom such that you are able to take the freedom of others.
Freedom has its bounds, yes?
That is why the FSF do their rants. It’s because unenlightened folks only think of the choice part of freedom and not the fact that others will use that ‘freedom’ to restrict the choices of others. They realise that true freedom involves social responsibility as well. Once upon a time the USA believed in this as well. Now it seems to pay lip service to it meanwhile the institutionalised corruption known as ‘lobby groups’ have undue influence in the legislation.
FSF have stated they have *zero* problem with business that respects that social responsibility. Richard Stallman points out that once upon a time he *sold* copies of emacs (including source). There is no philosphical dilemma with this. Their objective is the freedom to use and modify the software for any purpose, and to preserve these rights for others. If you are able to make money from your software at the same time then they are all for it.
Hope that cleared some of your naiive misconceptions.
ps. Incidentally, your are very wrong about the origins of the movement. Stallman started the movement when HP donated a very nice and expensive printer to his MIT lab. However, they refused to give him the source to the printer (giving source was the accepted practice at that time) so that Richard could fix a bug that was present in his environment. They refused. Richard went to a friend that had been donated the same printer and had been given the source by HP on the express condition that this friend not give the source to Richard. It was at that point that Richard realised that having source was essential for users to make use of the potential of software. His movement is all about the *users* of software (which is everybody, including developers who build systems based on the source of others). In fact, just this week I had to enhance the slider bar of the Google Web Toolkit incubator sotware for use in our company. I had the source code so could do this. Without it our company could not finish the product we needed for our customers and we could not bill them for the work (as software developing users we rely on Open Source to make money efficiently).
Open Source is the *embodiment* of cooperative capitalism not the antithesis. The large corporations you defend don’t seek to compete at all, instead they seek artifical *monopolies* through technical obfuscation. Please have a think about that rather than a superficial spouting of what corporate interests would have you believe.
Edited 2009-06-12 22:53 UTC
So long as that purpose is not to create a secure third party closed product from the free one by putting proprietary code atop it. Tivo much? Welcome to legitimate businesses giving the FSF the finger.
Naive? No, the FSF’s grand ideals are the naive part.
That is one of the many incidents that contributed to it, but seriously his story changes more often Barack talking about the economy… Which stands to reason since the back room MIT server geeks he built the movement out of all were effectively left behind by their mortal enemies, the corporations who drove the REAL computer revolution that if not for Linus Torvalds, would have left Unix aged and forgotten… since the REAL computer revolution was in the hands of legitimate commercial enterprises like Atari, Commodore, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Borland, Lotus, the list goes on.
I mean seriously, if this isn’t big enough a reason to give the FSF the finger, what is?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/common-distros.html
You want naive idealistic commie rheotoric, you need look no further than:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
Since so far as the FSF whackjobs are concerned, any programmer that actually wants to charge for the labor of writing a new program ranks right up there with the “great satan”. All the FSF’s philosophy and their crowning achievement, the overglorified EULA known as the GPL accomplishes is devaluating the labor of programmers. **** that.
Edited 2009-06-13 11:28 UTC
For a start, it’s “Too much” not “Two much”.
Of your precious list how many of these companies have survived or are making a current impact? If your company relies on software from these turkeys you are gonna be wasting time and money trying to keep their systems going.
We are in the midst of a free-software revolution. Plenty of people are resisting the change (Apple, Microsoft, Sony), some have a foot in both camps (IBM), and some embrace it and are running with it (Google). Unfortunately the myopic among us can’t see the potential and cling to outdated business models.
You can charge for software, but that doesn’t mean the customer doesn’t deserve source code to maintain it themselves if you go bust. They’ll love you for it and you actually get more work out of it because they don’t feel that choosing you is a strategic threat.
Ah, “pinko” and “hippie” as pejoratives. Perhaps you should go and troll on 4chan, since the reasonable and educated on this site think such stuff is rather immature.
John Wayne, Doug MacArthur, and Joe McCarthy have been dead for decades man, their view of the world is now accepted as so wrong and outdated so there’s no need for you to talk in caricature of them now.
Edited 2009-06-13 19:41 UTC
Man, that was one of the best explanations of why OSS is exactly the opposite of the commie boogie monster that some people make it to be. Unfortunately, I already spent some mod points on some of your previous enlightening posts so I can’t mod up this one anymore, but I wish I still could.
Please forgive me if I store the permalink to quote your post again in the future until this nonsense is completely gone from OSNews. Kudos!
Cheers!
I personally enjoy working with C# and Mono. They make my life so much easier. Why is all that hate?
I hope Parrot ends up replacing it.
http://www.parrot.org/
Edited 2009-06-13 01:24 UTC
What would you expect people in the FOSS community to react like if you pushed for (talk about it, develop it, develop on it) a platform that, like it or not, is highly distrusted because it is somehow related to a company that is highly mistrusted by the FOSS community?
You wouldn’t expect (at least I wouldn’t) people to be unsuspicious for the platform in and off itself. We just mistrust Microsoft… therefore Mono (and not because we believe that there’s a hidden agenda or something… well, I don’t think so though some others do believe there is). It’s not going to change in the short term. There’s nothing you can say to make us change our mind. I don’t think it’s an unexpected response from the FOSS community.
So, if you insist on pushing it, then don’t complain. You knew what was coming when you went ahead anyway. Suck it up.
I think Parrot is a better alternative to Mono.
Mono is patent encumbered software and Microsoft sooner or later will react against it, they don’t like Open Source to build outside Windows, if you think they do you are just being too naive. I’m sure they are just waiting for Mono to grow more so they can attack it on the right time to produce massive loses.
Parrot is a much better alternative and much better technology anyway.
http://www.parrot.org/
Where are all the great apps using Parrot?
Can we be sure Parrot doesn’t run afoul of VM framework patents?
Why can’t we build own own things and our own frameworks in the Open Source world, be original and use that… Why do we need to copy other frameworks and Microsoft all the time? See what happened with TomTom? I bet the same thing will happen with Mono, Wine, Samba, and other things.
If you go and look at the history of Microsoft and see how they treat competitors you might understand why I say this, I don’t think they are helping these open source projects, I think they are helping competitors in order to create some dependency and then destroy it later… so if they want to continue using it they only have the Microsoft way, and I don’t have anything against C#, Mono or the technology, but against Microsoft and their abusive monopolistic practices.
I hope they don’t react against Mono, or other things… and I’m no one to tell things to people, but I say it because I care.
Edited 2009-06-13 12:11 UTC
There are several Open Source frameworks out there, some experimental and some actively used.
In addition mono isn’t simply copying Microsoft, but also improving and extending the concept. Mono does things that you cannot do with the MS tools.
All of this is very funny. Typical comments.
Couple comments I have however.
First, try to put your past MS hate aside just for a moment.
Let’s keep in mind that MS is infact releasing a lot of source nowadays in their new-gen projects and creating communities where people can submit code.
Also the system that Bing is created on, was all submitted back to the community it originated from.
Think about companies like Oracle, trying to purchase Sun to destroy MySQL.
I think we can see a bit of a shift going on? Let’s continue.
Isn’t the core CLR/libraries a standard?
Isn’t Microsoft openly actually cooperating with Novell ? I know the Silverlight team run by Scott Guthrie is doing just that. They even provided them source code.
Isn’t projects like GTK# and such that would be “useful” to have default on Linux have nothing to do with patent “feared” items? I think this is the case. GTK# does not require Winforms, does not require ADO.NET etc.
Perhaps there’s some change occuring. Some of the legacy projects still require change but in all of the bashing over the years about legitimate gripes, perhaps some respect is warranted when they show they are changing some of the philosophy of some of their projects.
I mean things like being able to see the presidents inauguration and the olympics came to our platform because these 2 parties came together and worked insane hours late in the night to make it happen on launch day.
There are good things occurring whether you want to believe it or not. Are they perfect? Hell no. But it is a far cry to what they used to be that’s for sure, and I surely hope it continues to go in a positive direction.
Why would they try to destroy the community that they are spending 100’s of millions to try and reach out to in the last 2 years?
These days I see a company that releases source code, accepts patch submissions, works on toolkit cross-platform compatibility (Silverlight/Moonlight) and develops applications for other platforms (OSX/iPhone) which rival their own.
I would think if we want this progression to continue further, into the ideal result, we need to also reach out to them back instead of criticize everything they do. It’s a 2 way street.
I understand skepticism however I have a feeling in general even if MS was to do something drastic to accelerate the opening of arms, the community would just find some negative spin anyways.
Sun opened Java because it was desperate and fading. Microsoft is doing these ventures for entirely different reasons.
Just my opinion!
i will remove mono garbage after installing
… 2005
http://wiki.eyeos.org/History_of_eyeOS
Oops, My bad.
Sorry, guys, wrong thread :p
I wanted to post this on the Xenon thread.
Saw this on “Linux haters blog”:
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2009/06/to-all-you-mono-haters.html
So, it seems the self-proclaimed Linux haters are not Mono haters.
The whole thing is way out of proportion. One can’t help thinking Gtkmm + PyGtk would have been a better C escape strategy for the Gnome community.
Here I was under the mistaken impression that Linux meant freedom. If you wanted something great, if not great too. It seems that Linux is not really free because there are some who would force us to use mono, yet others who would force us not to.
If someone wants mono, let them and if you don’t than don’t use it but do not restrict access to something or force something and than pretend to stand for freedom, you would be than no better than MS
Linux is not free because it forces you to use free software?? Yeah, I see your logic…
Exactly: coercion is pretty much the antithesis of freedom, isn’t it? An OS oriented around user freedoms should probably include the freedom to run whatever software the user wants, not just the subset that the upstream provider has blessed.
And which software can’t you run because Mono is included?
Uhm, I was trying to explain why making it more difficult for users to acquire mono if they want it (or any other less-than-perfectly-free software) conflicts with the idea of free software: freedom includes the right to run software that distributors may not necessarily want you to run.
If Linux is truly free one should be able to use free or propriety software on it. If people want to use mono, they should be able to and not be harassed for it.
Mono does not suck. Get over it!