MonoDevelop vs. Xamarin Studio IDEs

[ciplogic]

I do not use MONO.

I use Mono, but you use C++.

I do not use save in ms doc formats.

But your LibreOffice can break patents anyway. If you get a documentation that is saved in DocX format, do you open it? Or if you export from LibreOffice to PDF, are you aware that LO can break Adobe or Apple's patents? Do you know that Cairo, implements a drawing language that is patented (PostScript)

TCP/IP does not belong to MS. I use only *droid, free* and libre* fonts, which are patent free.

Mono does not belong to MS either. So what's your point? If you use liberation fonts, what's the point too... you seem to mix copyright with patents. Patents are implementation techniques, copyright are related with brands and such.

H264 does belong to MS either, and I do not use it as well - preferring VP8+MKV+OGG.

Do you watch youtube in HD format? If so, most likely you will have a H264 encoded video. If you get a Vimeo video or a BBC video that uses the same H264 format, and there is a piece of news you want to watch, are you skipping it because is not OGG encoded? Do you do the same with songs that someone can give it to you in .mp3 format?

I do not use Samba, preferring NFS.
I prefer native applications and when I use WINE, it a compatibility talk layer between application and OS libraries, that looks like WinAPI, but it isn't.

I don't use Samba, I use Dropbox, or if is to copy fast, I prefer a memory stick. But would you want that Linux to be a crippled envionment that remove all patent risks. If you use Wine, you understand that may be patent breakage. I can say for example that the RSA implementation in C#/.Net has a difference in implementation from Mono one. A big enough one for the software I'm working on to need to use Dependency Injection to workaround these implementation differences. Seems to me that Mono is not a copycat for Windows. What do you do for your HAL/GDI+/DirectX state trackers that have many patents that Wine may break them in many small and big places to make possible Wine to run some of your Windows games... are not at risk? So remove Wine from your pie.

If Herb Sutter would apply a patent, then C++ 11 would be endangered, yes - but its up to standardization committee to clear this up, and so far, its clean.

You misunderstand again what copyright and patent are. There could be some implementation specifics that from a too crazy people, can consider that Herb added them to make C++ implementors to break MS patents. And it could be (theoretically speaking) the idea that a language feature of C++ 11 can be implemented by breaking MS patents. So as it could happen. would you remove all your C++ code to sleep right at night.
So this is the point of bringing Herb Sutter, not the idea that he has or not patents. MS have them, IBM too, Apple, Oracle, etc. Think about SSA reprezentation in compilers: it was pionereed by IBM. SSA is an intermediary optimization technique used in Academia and in modern compilers (most post 2000 year compilers use SSA in a form or the other, in GCC parlance is GIMPLE). Would you uninstall GCC because maybe once IBM would enforce SSA patents?

If you don't know what I mean, read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_...ssignment_form

According to Kenny Zadeck [1] Φ functions were originally known as phoney functions while SSA was being developed at IBM Research in the 1980s. The formal name of Φ function was only adopted when the work was first published in an academic paper.

[Vim_User]

Secondly, MONO is not safe as its provided on a promise, which has limited scope.

There never was a patent abuse/misuse/threat against Mono, regardless if there is a promise or not. So by your own definition Mono is safe to use:

No. Patents are not a threat, unless they are misused.

You and your argumentation are largely inconsistent with yourself. Just read what you have posted in the last months and you can clearly see that. If you aren't able to see that just post here and I will show you link for link where you are contradictory to yourself.

You were also proven in this thread to lie to support your point of view, but you have the courage to call someone else, who comes up with facts instead, a troll. Pathetic.

This is why there is a "Criticism of Microsoft" page on Wikipedia, but no "Criticism of Brosis" page: Microsoft mastered the art of FUD, you are just a liar that is inconsistent with his own opinion.

[Del_]

Please take a pill all of you. This area of patents and Mono is rather grey. Wikipedia sums it up nicely:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29#Mono_and_Microsoft.27s_patents

so it seems ASP.NET is both patented, not protected in any way by Microsoft, and part of Mono. Moreover, Microsoft is aggressively prosecuting any Android vendor under the sun with patents so lame it makes anybody want to cry (naming scheme in fat filesystems anyone?, yes exactly what is needed to use USB storage these days). To pretend that there are no issues is disingenuous at best. Luckily, these issues were not silenced, but brought up with force, and thanks to that we have the community promise that secures most of current Mono. Pretending that there is no issue anymore is very harmful as it prevents the necessary efforts to clear up the remaining parts. Make no mistake, todays Microsoft will sue anybody and everybody it can if linux ever threatens its monopoly on the desktop.

I saw H.264 mentioned too. Last time I heard both Microsoft and Apple was among the owners receiving royalties, and both were among the few fighting against royalty-free VP8 as hard as they could. This is Microsoft and Apple of today.

[Luke_Wolf]

Yes, in the past, and I never had an issue. I understand that Java is an abuse-secure language.

Which is why Oracle bought it to sue Google.... Unless you mean abuse of programmers is secure in which case I'll agree.

I don't understand why you call Sun monster... Their engineers surely were ill with elitism, but only in late stages.

Quite simply because they were.

How a company designs a language says a lot about them, and about their attitudes towards certain things.

Java was designed in the manner of a strongly overbearing parent who thinks everyone around them is a pedophile, including other children, and as a result is accosting everyone. This of course means that developers are treated like shit because they're so damn afraid of people "abusing" their language. To make matters worse they then had to go bribe schools into using it. The resulting hell of having to use the language and the politics of dealing with a sun-bribed school have caused many CSC majors to just drop out and go their own way, because they just can't put up with it. It's not like this attitude was really restricted to their language either, there's a reason a bunch of forks of openoffice were maintained before Oracle bought Sun out. And then of course there's the whole CDDL issue which was intentionally set up to be incompatible with the GNU GPL

Also being honest here what Sun Microsystem's software hasn't been crap and had a detrimental effect on the ecosystem as a whole? Open Office was an NIH solution that ripped the legs out from under KOffice which was and is the better solution from an architecture standpoint, however it's lacked the developers to really compete, thankfully under the Calligra brand it's finally beginning to gain momentum and compete. I'm not a database guy but I hear about MySQL being complained about all over the internet with Postgres being pushed as the alternative, complaints about MySQL not being ACID compliant and otherwise... You know my feelings on Java. I've never played around with Solaris but those I know who have regard it as being slow, though they thought it had interesting concepts, etc...

The first KDE experience I had, was at University at Sun Solaris workstation.
It was that experience, which made me overcome the initial difficulties of installing Linux and broke the Microsoft infested habit "computing=microsoft", which many people still suffer.
So, I am thankful to Sun for this.

What's more annoying is the "computing = Microsoft or Apple" thing, and the whole "Microsoft is trying to compete with Apple" meme. Because ultimately Apple is not Microsoft's competitor, the various Unixes have been and are, and Linux in particular. Remember next time someone says that that Bill Gates during the anti-trust trial did not hold up a macintosh but instead a box of Red Hat Linux. If anything Microsoft has been benevolent to Apple while Apple keeps trying to claw at them and stab them in the back. But then that gets used to try to enforce a proprietary duoculture.

MONO is the answer.

But you just said it wasn't .NET

I do not understand what are you writing here.
Oracle purchased Sun simply because it was a tasty piece of cake, and because Sun' engineers asked for it. Suing Google was an effort to cut piece of income, because Google used Java, and they lost. So this reassures that Java is reliable language for embedded secure programming.
And microsoft does not relate here at all, you need more than tin foil to protect yourself from microsoft, go ask Gary Kildall about that.
Google already won the case long ago. It was just an opportunistic effort from Oracle to cut a bit more value to Sun purchase, which failed.

No, if you were paying attention during the acquisition Oracle made a point about asking whether the sun people thought that they could sue Google successfully with their IP. Also the litigation process is not yet over as they still have to go through this appeal and however many more appeals there are going to be after this. The First Act may be over but the curtain has yet to close for the night.

Microsoft does relate here because like was the case with Sun Microsystems it's strongly against their interests to assert patents against a language implementation, while a company like Oracle who doesn't really care about a language or it's ecosystem will feel free to assert.

There is no "criticism of brosis" article on wikipedia, there is "criticism of microsoft" on wikipedia with A TRAIN FULL of proofs.
Anyone who does not believe it is either blind, dumb or payed to play dumb.

I don't see criticisms of random people from the internet on Wikipedia, you want those go to the Encylcopedia Dramatica or Uncyclopedia... I'm sure they'll be more than happy to create a page for them if you ask.

They will and your reasons are fairy tale. They have established a long standing habit and your calculations failed to take that habit into account.
Some like you believed Elop, now they dinner on streets.

I have no reason to believe that Microsoft actually wanted Nokia to fail. Nokia was at the top of their game during the time period where the acquisition occurred and my assumption is basically Microsoft looked out at the phone industry said "Okay our products aren't really gaining much market share, who is popular that we can take over and utilize to push our phones? hm... How about Nokia?" Of course that hasn't worked out very well and thus Nokia is falling apart at the seams. To be perfectly honest though I see that acquisition by Microsoft as having a net good effect as it means that a software house now owns the rights to Qt again (Digia) as opposed to a phone maker who doesn't want it on competing phone platforms. Yes it's a sad thing that a bunch of software developers lost their jobs but with their skill sets I would guess that most if not all have been hired into other companies by now.

[Luke_Wolf]

so it seems ASP.NET is both patented, not protected in any way by Microsoft, and part of Mono.

the open sourced ASP.NET is under Apache 2.0 which includes patent protection as part of the license.

[directhex]

the open sourced ASP.NET is under Apache 2.0 which includes patent protection as part of the license.

To be 100% accurate here, ASP.NET MVC is an open-sourced framework on top of ASP.NET.

ASP.NET MVC has patent protection, but ASP.NET is not open source and has no explicit patent guarantees.

Mono's ASP.NET implementation *could* infringe on patents (although no claims have been made in over a decade).

Are you safe using patent-granted ASP.NET MVC on top of an "unauthorized" ASP.NET base? That's a question for the lawyers.

[Luke_Wolf]

When I referred to Google being idiots I was joking. They know exactly what they are doing, and they are very good at what they are doing. What you are listing is design choices that some like and others don't. For instance, I agree with you that operator overloading is a very nice feature, but I am not thrashing C for not having it. In fact, C has proven its worth in huge projects, so it seems the deficit if any is not as big of an issue as make it up to be. More briefly, many programming languages can be adequate for various purposes, regardless of missing certain features.

Well my problem isn't so much missing features as why features are missing. I can deal with C or Python or whatever because although they aren't designed how I like, their attitude isn't utterly megalomaniacal, or other insanity (like perl).

This is a very interesting point, and I fully agree with you. Actually, I believe chances are the Windows monopoly will fall into pieces in few years, in any case the licensing prices might have to drop to near zero (like it has on handhelds, and like it did for netbooks when linux gave them competition). Hence, I believe Microsoft will be forced to open up windows, while moving their monopoly to MS Office and various server products. Othervise they risk the MS Office monopoly falling at the same time. If it does, their server solutions will struggle too.

Well I don't think they're going to open source Windows but I'm betting that they're going to break up their reliance on windows and port their various server products, and likely Visual Studio over to Linux.

[Del_]

Well I don't think they're going to open source Windows but I'm betting that they're going to break up their reliance on windows and port their various server products, and likely Visual Studio over to Linux.

Eh, I knew I should have rephrased that one. I did not mean that Microsoft would open source it (when I said open), I meant open up for other platforms. Like releasing office and other products for linux. If they don't they risk losing more than the windows monopoly. The windows monopoly on the desktop may prove to be of far less monetary value than before. With products like tablets and chromebooks selling like hot bread, an ever increasing number of people will discover alternatives to Microsoft Office and other Microsoft services. Even desktop linux has gotten a number of large deployments. That is very dangerous for Microsoft. If they don't provide their other products full-featured for linux-platforms, they risk losing their grip on the market across the board.

[Luke_Wolf]

Eh, I knew I should have rephrased that one. I did not mean that Microsoft would open source it (when I said open), I meant open up for other platforms. Like releasing office and other products for linux. If they don't they risk losing more than the windows monopoly. The windows monopoly on the desktop may prove to be of far less monetary value than before. With products like tablets and chromebooks selling like hot bread, an ever increasing number of people will discover alternatives to Microsoft Office and other Microsoft services. Even desktop linux has gotten a number of large deployments. That is very dangerous for Microsoft. If they don't provide their other products full-featured for linux-platforms, they risk losing their grip on the market across the board.

Yeah, it's kind of a perfect storm, particularly with what Valve is and will be doing. The next few years are going to be very interesting with just everything that is happening.

[Sonadow]

Yeah, it's kind of a perfect storm, particularly with what Valve is and will be doing. The next few years are going to be very interesting with just everything that is happening.

Alternatively, it can just as well play out in the reverse: Microsoft boosts its weakening desktop OS monopoly by tying Office, Visual Studio and all its highly-desired enterprise application software even tighter to the Windows platform.

After all, they have nothing to lose. We talk about Microsoft being 'forced' to eventually release a version of Office or Visual Studio or Sharepoint or Active Directory that works on Linux, but ask youselves this: are you willing to pay for Microsoft's software on Linux? Are you willing to pay the $200 for Office, the thousands for Visual Studio professional? Or are you just going to torrent them off TPB?

If you answer is no to the first question and yes to the second, then don't expect Microsoft to invest any money into porting its products to Linux. Especially since there is a expectation by Linux users that all software, regardless of their quality, should be made available at $0.00 for Linux.