Join renowned webcast speaker Joe Hummel for an overview of Mono, the open source .NET platform for Linux. Learn about the capabilities of Mono and its possible uses in your enterprise. This webcast is the first in a two-part series; Part 2 will air on February 8, 2005.
MSDN Webcast: Mono: Running .NET Applications on Linux
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Eugenia Loli
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Does this mean, that MS won’t do anything against Mono?
They need it somehow to beat Java is my guess. People can’t use the excuse: look Java is OS independent and NET is not. Well imho Java is still the best choice to write OS independent applications. Multi os is not supported by MS anyways.
Does this mean, that MS won’t do anything against Mono?
No.. that’s the opposite.
They want the largest number of Linux programmers to jump on Mono, so when they will sue it, they will do much more harm.
It’s The Microsoft Way, baby.
(Yeah, mod me down, but it’s true, like it or not..)
All .Net code is compiled into the common language run time, so in order for mono to be able to execute said code it needs to be able to transform (compile ?) the CLR code into native machine code.
But is it possible for microsoft to release libraries which could only be utilised under a windows environment. That is to say only microsofts .Net interpreter would be able to execute code located within the library.
But is it possible for microsoft to release libraries which could only be utilised under a windows environment. That is to say only microsofts .Net interpreter would be able to execute code located within the library.
They already have done this. Only the very base of the .Net is standard. The majority of it is non-standard and private. Windows.Forms is one example. Really, the parts that are really required to make it cross-platform (for example, someday building Office on Mono) are all private and non-standard. The mono team isn’t implementing them, really making mono useless.
Useless? I moved over a full ASP.net (http://www.projectbids.co.uk) website the other day over to Mono running XSP as the webserver. It was just a test but the site worked straight away without any changes or recompiling of libraries. Sounds better than useless to me.
As far as I’ve understood many basic .NET components like C# are quite open standards (probably more than Java, for example?), but what about ASP.NET, ADO.NET etc? Aren’t those technologies covered by MS patents?
I’m sure that quite many big companies and organizations could consider running ADO.NET and ASP.NET on Mono and Linux (& Unix) servers instead of MS IIS/.NET.
Technically the Mono/Linux/ASP.NET/ADO.NET combo works ok already. But as many governments have blindly accepted unrestricted software patents, and the software patent situation remains unclear globally, and MS doesn’t tell us openly what they’re really up to in regards to Mono, there don’t seem to be too many brave enough companies to follow that path yet.
So – many companies running non-Windows servers choose, for example, Java based solutions instead of .NET-based solutions and couldn’t care less for .NET. Now, is that what MS wants, to alienate others who use competing software more and more from MS?
This could be the time when MS could show at least some kind of friendliness to the alternative operating systems and Linux people by giving their official acceptance and blessing to running proprietary stuff like ASP.NET and ADO.NET on Linux too. If MS still keeps dreaming that they could own the whole wide software world with their monopolistic business tactics, they will notice that less and less people are interested in their vendor-lock-in-centered solutions, how ever handy they might be according to MS.
Something smells really bad in this whole thing. MS considering Mono? Has MS ever done something like this before? Considering “other” platforms? Nah. Something is definitely wrong here. I’ll have to keep my eyes on this one.
I moved over a full ASP.net (http://www.projectbids.co.uk) website the other day over to Mono running XSP as the webserver.
I really like Mono and Linux and I’m not trying to imply anything hidden or weird, but according to Netcraft that site is running Windows 2000 with IIS/5.0. Take a look: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.projectbids.co.uk.
I think something is either wrong with Netcraft or you have somehow managed to disguise your Linux server with XSP or Apache as Windows 2000 with IIS/5.0
Dude, did you fail to read the part where he said it ‘was just a test’?
He didn’t necessarily say he put the mono implementation into production.
if you’re really into .NET and Mono you’ll find out that open source projects for .NET are sprouting everywhere. they’re offering alternatives to the .NET way of doing things (e.g. ADO.NET and ASP.NET) by porting the Java frameworks which themselves serve as alternatives to the J2EE!
so maybe the open source community can build up its arsenal and eventually lose dependence on the MS-specific parts of .NET. who knows, the tables might turn and these frameworks can even be more popular than the MS-specific ones?
“No.. that’s the opposite.
They want the largest number of Linux programmers to jump on Mono, so when they will sue it, they will do much more harm.
It’s The Microsoft Way, baby. ”
Please cite one example when MS has done this.
Perhaps they’re taking a big picture approach. Although the existance of Mono does indeed make it easier for managed Windows apps to move to Linux, it has the advantage of undermining Java. Particulary for companies that have made a strong investment in Java, such as IBM and (obviously) Sun, this would have a huge negative impact on their long term strategic plans. Sun would basically be screwed and IBM would find itself having to adjust the majority of their product line to accomodate the CLI. This would give Microsoft a chance to gain an advantage while their competitors regrouped. Not sure what that advantage would be, and I’m certainly not saying it would play out that way for certain; it’s just a theory.
I doubt Microsoft will sue over Mono. However the one thing Miguel et al fail to understand is the community has no issue with the fact that Microsoft created .Net, the problem is Microsoft controls & directs .Net. They just change it, make all changes patents screwing the Mono project, causing minor headaches for IT depts but they’ve done with MS Office for years and people _still_ buy it/use it.
The problem is that Mono is dependent upon Microsoft’s direction for its future. I believe this is similar to the Harmony projects goal of reverse engineering Qt, because that’s what this is over and above the ECMA stuff.
This is a huge grey area. And perhaps that’s why a well-publicized study by Novell was never actually openly published. Head in the sand so-to-speak.
The problem is most bleeding edge GNOME software is using Mono. Maybe it isn’t that much of a problem as it will still work under Linux.
I do find it funny however that Miguel is leading the charge with Mono while he critizes Trolltech at every opportunity. He reminds me a little bit of George W Bush in that he keeps saying the same lines over and over again and hoping that “This guy from Microsoft/Iraq said this was ok/there’s WMD here so it must be alright/true”.
I’m an end-user so I shouldn’t really care but it does worry me all the wasted hours reverse engineering Microsoft’s products when they have complete control and will just make the next .net incompatible with Mono and protected by patents.
Microsoft does NOT play fair. Anybody who says otherwise is lieing to themselves. After Longhorn comes out we can put this puppy to bed however. They *WILL* break it, it is just a matter of when.
The Trolltech comment is he loves Microsoft but Trolltech has bent over backwards to appeal to the open-source community while Microsoft hates it, called it a bunch of commies last I checked.
And I’m not a KDE person either. If anything I have an unhealthy fascination with the Mozilla project but I’m not a developer so don’t start in with Qt licence fees (any business has fees. rent, etc.), XUL is slow/hard (so fix it).
I want to like GNOME so bad but this Mono project is the wrong direction. There are limited hours in a day and so many are being wasted hoping Microsoft’s “good-will” will happen. Microsoft has no good will. This is proven time and time again. It’s like an abused women thinking her husband will change this time, he’ll be nice and bam, smacked in the face again. Leave this relationship. You won’t but you will get figuratively smacked in the face.
Well I’ve blabbed enough on this!
Today, mono has already made a name for itself.
Its been recognized by both Microsoft and public media.
Applications are beeing built and the development process is straddling on, all with no word from Microsoft – no cease and desist warnings to indicate the slightest problem from Microsoft.
Now, enemies of mono sometimes advocate that once mono becomes mainstream Microsoft will strike and we (FOSS developers) will be locked in and forced to go flat out windows.
Is this at all a relevant threat scenario? I don’t know a lot of US law, but most countries have (in court rulings) something called (forgone?) conclusion wich might apply here. What is ment by conclusion is that by _not_ taking action when first faced with facts (within reasonable time) they have forsaken their right to take action. This is pretty much the case here – what does people here think of this?
Well. There are different things to sue over and fight for, so any fight will take years and drain the energy and money of small firms that may be involved. IBM and Microsoft are two giants that can fight over this for the next century, but many small guys would get rolled over.
On the other hand, Mono is not totally bad for Microsoft, so they will use it until they need it. See, even Mono reaching it’s 1.0 release, it’s not installed by default anywhere and it is 99,9% of the internet service providers don’t provide it when you need a server. So you are on your own most of the time.
Many Mono supporters hide on Windows with the Windows tools and servers. 🙂
Not necessarily. You might be aware of the patent of the LZW algorithm that the GIF image format is using… To my knowledge, its owner, Unisys, didn’t enforced their patent as soon as they got it. They waited for a little while.
Anyway, I don’t think Microsoft would do that. They are far more likely to do what Anonymous (IP: —.osgoode.yorku.ca) said: making changes that will screw the portability of Mono programs by adding new stuff and depreciating the older stuff. Mono/Linux programs will probably run on .NET but forget about .NET/Windows programs running on Mono. Unfortunately, most programmers are still using MS Windows… Many of them won’t bother to migrate if their stuff doesn’t work on the alternatives.
We will see what will eventually happens but I believe Miguel & co are shooting themselves in the foot.
Well, I don’t have the details regarding the Unisys case, but there you could argue that the use of LZW algorithm was a non obvious part of the GIF-format – thus a factor to consider when establishing reasonable time.
With mono – this is blatantly not the case since mimicing the .NET framework is a explicit purpose of the mono project.
looks mono is not a hobby anymore, it is a real serious proyect.
Shut up already.
MICROSOFT HAS RELEASED C# SPECIFICATION AS ECMA STANDARD !
MONO IS BASED ON THAT SPECIFICATION !
Mono is _NOT_ reverse-engineered etc which could cause a lawsuit. Windows.Forms other hand IS propitary thingy, but we already have C#, wx.NET, Cocoa#. We don’t NEED Windows.Forms.
People, please, get that already!
do you, th?
What about the database interfaces too? ADO.Net. Are you willing to give it up as well?
When we talk about languages people use to say that languages don’t matter, what matter are libraries. Lo and behold, the libraries and interfaces are not standards. 🙂
What about the database interfaces too? ADO.Net.
Or gnomedb-sharp.
apart from anything else, mono seems to be a good platform for development on linux … so i guess even if microsoft make changes to .NET which will break compatibility and therefore you still have a good, solid platform for Linux software development, as a lot of good solid bleeding edge projects show (beagle, muine, f-spot etc…).
So i don’t know what all the worry is about, as th pointed out
mono is based on ECMA standards released by Miscrosoft.
”
So i don’t know what all the worry is about, as th pointed out
mono is based on ECMA standards released by Miscrosoft.
”
ECMA standard is NOT compatible with open source. they have a a RAND policy which in incompatible. get a clue
MONO runs happily on other plattforms too, like MacOSX or Windows so why does everybody narrows down everything on Linux ? Linux is not the only Plattform in the World besides MS!
That, I think is something people forget here. Mono does run on many platforms and is desgned to. If .Net does get the MS bastardisation treatment, you will stil be able to run with Mono on Windows and develop for it.
Mono has the potential to fork .Net and take the computing mainstream with it if MS does decide to try and make .Net wholly proprietry.
I heard of at least one main Desktop Publishing Page Layout program that is supposedly being written in Mono. Quark. Would be great if other apps were as well like, hmmm, Cubase (-:
If MS does come down on Mono then the computing world needs to tell them to piss-off!
.NET is free patents! …but Avalon/XAML not I think.
Linux can copy an bad version of .NET but no Avalon/XAML.
When people come to dev XAML based desktop/web contents Linux go to trash.
I think that the Mono project should try to start innovating more and not just follow what MS does with .NET.
For example. though C# is a relatively open ECMA standard, ASP.NET and ADO.NET are proprietary patented MS .NET technologies. Could Mono try to replace thoe techologies with something more independent than just taking ASP.NET and ADO.NET alsmost as they are on MS .NET platform? Even if MS would never sue anyone for using ASP/ADO.NET on Linux, just the slight possibility of infringing MS’s patents doesn’t really encourage any big companies etc. to go that way. So either MS does with ASP.NEt & ADO.NET what they have already done with C#, make them open ECMA standards or something like that, or, IMHO, Mono would do better not develop their independent solutions to those particular tasks.
Also in general I tend to get a feeling that Mono is maybe trying to copy too much of what MS has already done. Ok, so maybe it is not copying and reverse-engineering, but one easily sees it like that after just reading the Mono roadmap, for example (“when the next version of MS .NET will have A and B, we will try to have similar A and B on Mono ASAP too”, etc.)
If the Mono project is so darn innnovative and good what they say it is, couldn’t Mono people try to do their own thing more? Heck, maybe even try to do things much better than what MS has achieved with .NET, and not give so strong an impression that they are, in reality, just trying to copy what MS has already done? (and yes, I do know that Mono is not a straight copy of .NET)
Some ideas: IMHO instead of putting energy to copying things like MS VB.NET, concentrate more on making some of the best dynamic languages like Python, PHP, Perl and Ruby to interoperate better with Mono. Then Mono would have something truly innovative and also independent from MS. Monodevelop could need much more development too and there’s plenty of room for independent FLOSS innovation there.
The real question is: would people be interested in such an alternative when most PHBs are already sold to Microsoft? If developers can’t port their programs they developed in VS.NET without effort, they won’t care of Mono. Of course, Mono does run on Windows but I don’t know if many people that would like to have 2 VMs that would do pretty much the same thing, save from the interface and the libraries.
If Mono was drastically different from .NET, that would be okay. But right now, I see it as doomed. And for some reason, it’s pretty unstable for me, even the 1.0 release…