Microsoft Hosts: GNOME & Mono Festival of Love

[robpvn]

I hope they reach their goal to port Banshee to Gtk# 3.
Nice to hear they will improve Banshee, Pint, F-Spot, etc.

But honestly, why are Microsoft doing this?
Why do they care about C# / .NET on Linux?

I think Microsoft should support open protocols, formats, specifications and standards and push for interoperability.
But why spend time on improve the software of the competition? It does not make any sense.

Speaking as one of the crazies going to the hackfest, I think the answer is that Microsoft quite pragmatically see Mono as a useful companion to their own .Net. For one thing, the easy cross-platform compatibility means that Banshee, Pinta and Tomboy in fact work on Windows as well. So in effect they are also sponsoring application development for users of their own platform, even though us open source guys doing the work all run Linux. (I for one will not run Windows on my personal laptop simply because I see no point in it when I can get something better for free.)

The second reason why Microsoft has no problem with Mono is that it can only increase the pool of developers with C# skills, as well as increase the amount of environments existing C# programmers can apply their skills to. Microsoft themselves have used Monodroid to create iOS applications because they after all have a lot more C# programmers inhouse than they have Objective-C programmers. In the meantime, I get to work on fun programs on my favourite platform in my spare time, while still honing skills that my new employer appreciates. (Like a lot of other people, I will be working in a Windows-dominated workplace.)

As for the age old concern that Microsoft has some sinister plan to sue everybody using it, I simply don't believe it. To begin with, they long ago made a promise not sue like Oracle just did over Java, and they committed C# to the ECMA, which was never done with Java. Beyond that, even if they were two-timing doublecrossing bastards, the Oracle v. Google lawsuit has just set a precedent quite explicitly stating that they would lose if they tried it. On top of that, they have used Mono for their own products, and as we now see, even sponsored a hackfest.

So yes, Microsoft is a big multinational company whose main goal is to make more money. But being friendly with Mono can only help them.

Before I ventured into the whole "making open source programs with the language everyone loves to hate" gig, I was aware of the concerns around it. So I checked it out, looked at what Mono proponents had to say and what detractors had to say. When it comes down to it, Mono proponents really just had better, more reasonable arguments for why there is no danger. I'm not saying that everyone should use C# for everything, but I find it to be a very comfortable language to use for a lot of things. When everything else is equal (and it really is), it is a matter of personal tastes regarding what language you like to work with.

Edit: And also what directhex said.

[kayosiii]

Microsoft is a large company and If understand correctly it is broken in many different departments which are competitive with each other. My guess is that the division that handles .Net has decided that spreading adoption of .Net (mono) is a good thing for .Net and it doesn't really have anything to do with Microsoft's planning outside of that.

[peppepz]

1. Visual Studio is the most enhanced IDE as of today. There is nothing better. (GUI design, MSDN, ctrl + space for preview of (all) possible variables/functions/classes/namespaces [I've yet to see at least one IDE aside from VS and NetBeans that is able to do that])

Then you haven't tried other IDEs. As you've said yourself, Netbeans does that and is better than Visual Studio. Also try QT Creator.

2. C# is multi-platform, easy to use and still manages to give you a nice performance boost (compared to other languages like Java (slow, big thing) or C++ (too complex for GUI applications and if you don't know exactly what you are doing you get tons of memory leaks)). Also the documentation is pretty good.

Pure bullshit. Java is much faster than Mono. Not a bit faster, but A LOT faster. In fact, it's the third fastest language after C and FORTRAN. And unlike C#, it's really cross platform.

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming-languages-are-fastest.php

[kraftman]

Just boycott MS which is just pure evil and crap company. There are just few good guys who're responsible for Vista and Metro. Thanks a lot for your hard work!

[peppepz]

For one thing, the easy cross-platform compatibility means that Banshee, Pinta and Tomboy in fact work on Windows as well. So in effect they are also sponsoring application development for users of their own platform, even though us open source guys doing the work all run Linux. (I for one will not run Windows on my personal laptop simply because I see no point in it when I can get something better for free.)

A pity that compatibility goes only one way. Mono-based stuff will run on .NET for Windows, the opposite is not true.

As for the age old concern that Microsoft has some sinister plan to sue everybody using it, I simply don't believe it.

Age old? You say it as if something had changed during this "age". Instead, we're still here with Microsoft doing all they can to kill Linux and suing the hell out of anyone who tries to use it commercially.

To begin with, they long ago made a promise not sue like Oracle just did over Java, and they committed C# to the ECMA, which was never done with Java.

To be more precise, they submitted a very limited subset of a seven-years old version of the .NET framework for "standardization". Applications written in that obsolete subset of the .NET framework can't even display a GUI. Everything else is not standardized, and is not covered by Microsoft's "promise".

That said, the Google lawsuit did "poison" the use of Java in open source projects IMHO. If I were a hardware manufacturer I would think twice before using Java in my product now.

Beyond that, even if they were two-timing doublecrossing bastards

There's no "if". We know what they are. Ask tomtom, sendo, sun, b&n, netscape about them. Or any Android manufacturer on the planet. They're even trying to prevent installing non-Microsoft OSes in standard PCs, what more evidence do we need.

So yes, Microsoft is a big multinational company whose main goal is to make more money. But being friendly with Mono can only help them.

Yes, that's for sure, we 100% agree here.

[mbit]

Still causious

From:

http://www.suse.com/company/press/2011/7/suse-and-xamarin-partner-to-accelerate-innovation-and-support-mono-customers-and-community.html

"The agreement grants Xamarin a broad, perpetual license to all intellectual property covering Mono, MonoTouch, Mono for Android and Mono Tools for Visual Studio."
Can we get to see this license to make sure it is truly perpetual and not just marketed as perpetual?
Can we get to know what exactly this intellectual property is?

"Xamarin will [] assume stewardship of the Mono open source community project."
What happens when someone takes ownership of Xamarin, as was done with Ximian/SuSe/Novell,
and as a result takes ower the stewardship of Mono?
Would a community fork be possible or is the intellectual property making this impossible?

I really think these questions need to be answered before considering trusting the Microsoft Mono partnership.

[robpvn]

A pity that compatibility goes only one way. Mono-based stuff will run on .NET for Windows, the opposite is not true.

Strictly speaking this is untrue. Only applications using Windows-specific stacks that are not implemented in Mono will not run. Granted, that's probably a majority, but this still has no bearing on the issue of why Microsoft would want to be friendly to Mono.

Age old? You say it as if something had changed during this "age". Instead, we're still here with Microsoft doing all they can to kill Linux and suing the hell out of anyone who tries to use it commercially.

Not a lot has changed, no, except the chance of Microsoft suing over the use of Mono getting even smaller.

To be more precise, they submitted a very limited subset of a seven-years old version of the .NET framework for "standardization". Applications written in that obsolete subset of the .NET framework can't even display a GUI. Everything else is not standardized, and is not covered by Microsoft's "promise".

Still more than Java, as we have seen.

That said, the Google lawsuit did "poison" the use of Java in open source projects IMHO. If I were a hardware manufacturer I would think twice before using Java in my product now.

Honestly I don't think Java's position has been that much weakened given that Oracle lost. It has merely strengthened C#'s credibility.

There's no "if". We know what they are. Ask tomtom, sendo, sun, b&n, netscape about them. Or any Android manufacturer on the planet. They're even trying to prevent installing non-Microsoft OSes in standard PCs, what more evidence do we need.

Which is part of the reason I think that having open source alternatives for their products is valuable, so that those who have invested on Windows platforms have an opportunity to leave if the screws get tightened. They may be backstabbing bastards, but their hands are pretty much tied on the Mono issue.

Yes, that's for sure, we 100% agree here.

Which quite nicely answers the question I was replying to about why Microsoft NERD agreed to host it.

I really wish we could all just live and let live on this issue. I believe this will work out well in the end, others believe it won't. We'll see in twenty years who has guessed right, in the meantime people can continue using what they want do to their stuff.

[jabjoe]

Guardian might be on something and why MS would host this event.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...urce-ecosystem

With MS hosting this Mono event, even I don't think MS are going to attack Mono stuff any time soon.
But I do think helping Mono is helping MS. Regardless of what they may or may not do with any legal suits, .NET is an MS standard. They call the shots. They write the rules of the game.

If we want to be free of them, and others like them, we need to have own free rules and games.

Mono strikes me the same as WISE before it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/07...s_how_ms_used/

We know MS and standards. They know the most important thing is to control standards, then they can always be the best(only?) implementation. They will always have the head start on anything new in the standard, announcing it at the same as a implementation. Worse, to be compatible, we have to match the implementation not the standard. The normal "code is law/bug-for-bug" and "chasing tail lights" arguments. ;-)

If some Metro Mono announcement is made at this event, I'm going to laugh as it all beginning to look quite desperate to me. Especially with the Ubuntu/Debian Mono packager comments on how Mono is going on reddit. http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/c...tu_ama/c4t0tcn

I don't think ill of all Mono people, many are clearly very talented. I've even got some Mono friend who think I have a foil hat on the issue. I just think they need to be a whole lot more cynical and not be blinded by tech they want to play with. MS especially, but also Apple and Google are not out to be our friends. They want us to help them promote their standards when really we should be making and promoting our own if we wish to be free.

[Detructor]

Then you haven't tried other IDEs. As you've said yourself, Netbeans does that and is better than Visual Studio. Also try QT Creator.

I tried the 'most known' IDEs (Eclipse, Anjuta, Netbeans, Visual Studio, ValaIDE, monodevelop) and none of them are as good as Visual Studio itself. Monodevelop comes close but it would need a WPF editor (and mono would need the WPF components).

As for QT creator: Does it support other components? (like gtk2 or gtk3?).

Pure bullshit. Java is much faster than Mono. Not a bit faster, but A LOT faster. In fact, it's the third fastest language after C and FORTRAN. And unlike C#, it's really cross platform.
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u3...re-fastest.php

nice try, have you ever seen real Java applications? There are two hints that you are using one: The GUI looks bad and is bad designed (I slowly get the feeling that Java developers in general have no clue on how to design a GUI), it uses far too much RAM and it's slow. (I did some 'benchmarks' myself back in the day...had to decide on which language to use a year ago: C# or Java, one of the 'biggest' tasks was to get a big XML file and get it into a database...maybe I did it wrong (I consulted some Java devs at the company I worked at during the time, they tweaked a few things which got me ~10 seconds) but the C# application did the same thing in 3/4 of the time.

Maybe they got better in version 7 (that'd explain the result of the website). I've to take a closer look at what that 'benchmark' does and how it was implemented.

[frantaylor]

nice try, have you ever seen real Java applications? There are two hints that you are using one: The GUI looks bad and is bad designed.

The "No True Scotsman" stuff is REALLY LAME!

YES, I see "real Java applications" all the time. They are used EVERY DAY to run ALL MANNER of web applications.

"The GUI looks bad and is bad designed"

If you think this is a property of THE LANGUAGE USED TO IMPLEMENT AN APPLICATION

You are 100% IGNORANT!!!

""The GUI looks bad and is bad designed"

I guess that would mean that iTunes and MS Word are all JAVA applications, according to YOUR theory!

"maybe I did it wrong "

AH YES!!! The SELF APPOINTED EXPERT who DOESN'T REALLY KNOW WHAT HE IS DOING!!!

FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ANYWAY!