Miguel de Icaza on Mono, Ximian/Novell, XAML 481
moquist writes "Netcraft has an interview with Miguel de Icaza, of Gnome and Ximian fame. Icaza expounds his thoughts on Mono (the .Net framework for open source), the current direction of Microsoft's .Net, Novell's acquisition of Ximian, Novell's Linux desktop environment, Linux for grandmas and kids, and "the greatest danger to the continuing adoption and progress of open source" (Hint: it's pronounced "XAML".)."
Nice wrap-up (Score:5, Interesting)
it's pronounced "XAML". (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Zamil? (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I think the world needs a 15 year moratorium on the use of acronyms. They need to take a break.
This guy is awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
He acknowledges that the Microsoft replacement for HTML is a rich user experience to come, despite the fact it certainly is dangerous to a certain extent.
Do realize that, GNU/Linux zealots : you can say something is good from a certain point of view (usability), and bad from another (interoperability). Isn't that incredible ?
Really ; isn't that incredible ?
Regards,
jdif
Apple did this (minus XML) in 1988 (Score:2, Interesting)
It was expensive, didn't have the simplicity of HTML as a starting point and, perhaps, was a little ahead of its time. (Client/Server was still catching on.) The fact that few mainframe guys liked Macs may have been a factor, too.
Links:
"The only problem with the MacworkStation [a software program] is that instead of making it a public domain standard, Apple is licensing the source code for $1500 to 'interested' parties" - MacTech Magazine archived article [mactech.com]
Apple Computer History Weblog [computerhistory.org]
Re:Naming conventions (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, But... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Naming conventions (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, they're the minority in that they actually create permalinks and follow the W3C recommendation by default. Their content will easily be archived and entombed for eternity while maintaining an easily extractable timestamp.
Re:Why all this admiration of MS tech? (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft has already applied for a patten on ways to use XML so it could be possible that they will try to just lock everyone out of cross platform development or somethign simular. One of the main benifits i see comming from mono and the use of XML or XAML is that it shouldn't be too hard to get programs to run on any system the way they were designed to run. I mean application A will look and act like application A on windows, linux, Mac and so on. One of the most common exuses i hear about why people won't use linux today is because of programs not crossing over. "if i can't run photoshop i'm not even going to look at it" or "but the menus and everything are different. i can't find anything, the windows version is better" does anynthing here sound familier?
If microsoft does find a way to leverage this to a new standard, it would really suck to be playing catchup later on down the road. I think linux and the people involved have, on several occasions, developed a much better technoligy and in some cases should be the better standards. What they lack is the marketing to drive that piont home with the people making the buying decisions in the larger companies, and we all know that the smaller companies need to be compatible with the larger ones. After you discount the monopoly position you still have to contend with being able to interoperate with those that have what you want.
Re:Why all this admiration of MS tech? (Score:5, Interesting)
I dont get it, MS has failed numerous times before with "exciting" new technologies and i dont really understand why they are bound to success now.
And Microsoft has succeeded numerous times with technologies too, such as DirectX and I suppose COM considering its widespread usage throughout the Windows OS. They've failed in the past, they've succeeded in the past. XAML can do either.
XAML might as well just be a failiure. Is it really a threat to linux? Not today and not tomomorrow since its just wapourware on paper as of today.
There are a couple articles on MSDN [microsoft.com] that discuss XAML and provide sample code, such as this XAML RSS reader [joemarini.com]. Longhornblogs [longhornblogs.com] regularly has XAML-related entries, most of which link to code, a sample executable, and screenshots. XAML is definitely not vapourware. It exists and people are using it.
Comments from an MS Developer (Score:5, Interesting)
When I first heard of the Mono project here on
I welcome further the possibility to continue to use the development environment I know while being able to deploy my code across windows and linux platforms. (I am not a fan of Java and say what you wish about C#, but I find it to be a very nice language.)
I wish the mono team the best of luck.
Re:The advantages of taking MS seriously... (Score:1, Interesting)
Definitely not close to the most, but with Service Pack 2 RC1 and the built-in firewall enabled, Windows XP appears to be alot more secure in my initial testing.
These MS compatibility projects are a mistake (Score:2, Interesting)
Imagine a world where one can only use XAML indeed. If XAML is supported fully on linux eventually, MS will make sure that their version is always one step ahead. They have proven in the past, and leaked internal emails that were evidence in the recent european court cases brought out more leaked internal memos, that they deliberatly hide aspects of their APIs to give them an advantage. They deliberatly release bogis example software, and change the API too often, for reasons of confusing the competition rather then legitimate technical reasons.
They will definatly do this for XAML too, leaving windows as the dominate player in a XAML world at the expense of linux.
How can we avoid this?
Simple. The open source community must ignore XAML and
Re:Its that loser miguel again praising Windows. (Score:4, Interesting)
You are overlooking the fact that Mono has two stacks. One Microsoft clone and a home grown solution. The home grown solution is cross platform and not the same direction as Microsoft.
I any case. This isn't a case of choosing between our own direction and Microsoft's direction. It is choosing between a whole mess of open source projects moving in their own way or a coordinated push to integrate disparate open source projects and technologies that currently do not integrate well.
The patent issue has been covered so many times before. When it comes to patents, it doesn't matter if you are cloning Microsoft technologies or building something entirely original - your risk is the same because no matter what you are implementing, you are probably infringing a patent anyway. The only effective defence you have is prior art.
Re:Miguel is right-on-target!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Example: Gnome could ask evolution for it's contact information. In fact, Gnome could ask for any piece of information, group of information, or all of evolutions information. The information would be returned in an XML format. Gnome could also ask for meta data from evolution.
If desktop applicatons started implementing this standard, It would be very easy to write interoperable applications. In fact, it would be very easy to implement entire new applications based on the information existing applications have.
The lines between applications would become blurred, and we would have a very rich environment. In fact, an idea such as this just might be the killer concept the blows the door wide open for Unix/Linux.
Re:netcraft confirms (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Miguel recognizes the fact that Microsoft is big, doesn't play nicely, and doesn't like having other people in its sandbox.
2) Miguel presumably believes that Linux is a superior system -- that given the opportunity, users will prefer Linux.
3) Miguel presumably believes that a primary reason Microsoft retains its position is because of barriers to interoperability established by Microsoft. By promoting their own, closed file formats and protocols, Microsoft makes it difficult for customers to move to other systems.
4) Miguel improves interoperability between Windows and Linux, reducing the barriers that Microsoft has worked so hard to establish, that prevent people from using Linux as a full or partial subsitute for their own products.
Then, once barriers to transition have been eliminated, as long as OSS developers and distro providers are providing a superior alternative, users can and will switch.
Application choice favourable to Gnome. Obviously. (Score:4, Interesting)
Right after saying:
"We cannot choose one desktop over the other - Gnome or KDE - because there's users for both code bases."
He then states:
"We're making the decision it's going to be OpenOffice, the browser it's going to be Mozilla, the email client it's going to be Evolution, the IM client it's going to be Gaim. So we basically have to pick successful open source projects and put them together."
The problem is that, as far as I know, these tend to be the default applications used on top of the gnome DE. Granted I would install OpenOffice when setting up a computer with KDE, but it would make more sense to use konqueror, kmail(/Kontact) and kopete instead of the other programs. In fact given time and if koffice manage to convert over to the openoffice file format (which I believe they are doing) it might make more sense to install this for basic users, as like the other programs, it is tied in well to the KDE DE. This leads me to the assumption that Novell will eventually, at least in the short run, ship Gnome as the default as KDE will have to load 2 lots of services (it's own + those for OOo/gaim/evolution/mozilla integration) and will thus require many more resources.
In the long term I hope that this kind of activity will help to unify the two desktops background services, allowing software to be written that works with an equal level of tie-in with both DE, however I guess this will take a long time and lots of carefull negotitation before it happens.
Miguel is walking a fine line... (Score:3, Interesting)
If #1 happens, the Miguel has wasted his time. If #2 happens, the FOSS community will NEED his work to be able to interoperate with the majority of the WWW.
So, on one hand, cloning XAML hedges our bets, but on the other, it helps XAML gain acceptance, because even the FOSS people can use it.
So, we want Miguel to continue what he's doing, but we also want him to fail!
gDesklets (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Disappointed in Miguel-The good enough train wr (Score:4, Interesting)
If you have to install a 7 meg browser (mozilla) to make your application work why not just ship an application that updates itself over the network? Better yet why not just write a java web start application. Either way you have to get some sort of a platform installed on each and every machine and keep it updated. maybe if Mozilla could get their act together and come up with a clever way to share a network installed mozilla amongst the desktops we would have a compelling solution. It's a lot easier to distribute an icon to every desktop then a full blown application and it sure would be handy to just upgrade the network copy and go home. Mozilla really needs to look into centralized management of user prefs, plug ins, bookmarks etc.
Where MS kills you is in forcing people who have windows to install IE and updating IE when they update their windows. Maybe what's needed is a XUL activex plug in so that XUL will work with IE.
I do agree with you about the database application thing though. 90% of all business applications touch a database.
Speaking of WinFS... (Score:2, Interesting)
We're trying to compete with
Re:Embracing and Extending XUL? (Score:3, Interesting)
The main problem is that I don't think anybody has really experimented with using Glade for anything other than GTK widget heirarchies. The other problem is that GObject isn't really a match for the .NET object model currently. With some work it could be a fantastic middle ground between what COM was and what .NET is - you still gain the advantage of actually using the real platforms instead of "skins" (see CPython vs Python.NET sometime), but you can still interop with other platforms at the OO level.
The main problem with sucking Glade files through SOAP/XML-RPC is that you'd have to relay all the signals to an instance on the server. GTK+ wasn't really designed for high latency feedback like that. It *could* work, but it probably wouldn't work well.
So there seem to be several alternatives:
1) Use Mono with our own XAML/Avalon implementation. .NET already has code access security and other things you want for sandboxing, though given the mess that Java applets/security was I'm not sure it's necessary a good thing. Pros: compatibility, Cons: we're chasing a standard we don't have any influence over so will always be behind.
2) Improve Mozilla/XUL - some previous poster suggested fully documenting it, integrating it with Apache/Tomcat, writing corporate webapps in it etc - YES. These are excellent suggestions for how to improve XUL as an app delivery platform. I used to be quite into XUL and knew the creator of JabberZilla : the things you could do with it even in the pre 1.0 days were mind boggling. XUL may never be a good way to write client side apps, but for internally deployed webapps it's fantastic.
3) Leverage current Linux technologies to produce something like ActiveX but with security. I was thinking about that this morning. If you have an SELinux/DBUS enabled system you can get quite good sandboxing even for native code. You'd want some kernel mods to prevent certain "attacks", but I think you can get pretty close to what .NET CAS provides except you can also reuse the entire free desktop platform as well (all the libraries that don't have .NET bindings for instance).
You could then layer some simple technologies on top of the web browser to write web-deployed client-side apps using GTK/Glade or Qt or whatever.
In other words, it'd have all the good bits of ActiveX, but without the bad bits. I'm not sure this is a good way to go though - ActiveX/Java Applets seem to be a mostly dead idea, except in a few old-skool corporate webapps.
Don't get caught in Headlights! (Score:1, Interesting)
It's worth noting that XAML is _easier_ to develop in, and for that reason alone, it will do well. I'll repeat that. XAML is easier to develop in so it WILL succeed! Just look at visual basic. Why wouldn't you want an easier life. This is what people want. Easier XML based GUI's. There is no need
I hear a lot about 'cloning'
My advice is _screw_ the
What OSS needs to do is make, from scratch, a cross platform XML based GUI design with Open Source APIs. XGUI or something. It doesn't HAVE to run on
Never drive by the headlights of the guy in front. Turn on yours.
P.S. It's me ObsessiveMathsFreak. Can't log in for some ungodly reason
Re:What's scary? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, XAML apps are similar to HTML pages, but they, like HTML, also need a scripting part to actually do something and not just be static.
I do not believe that the true intention here is for apps to use any sort of "scripting" technology as has been used in past web application platforms such as ASP. It would be more accurate to say that the application code is written in an actual (non-scripting)
The point is, I'm pretty sure we are not talking about *scripting* as the main purpose - although there may also be the ability to do some scripting.
You missed a point: (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, you didn't know that about de Icaza? [theregister.co.uk] Miguel doesn't just like some of Microsoft's ideas - Miguel wishes he were working for them.
Denied migration (was Re:it's pronounced "XAML". (Score:3, Interesting)
Well whoop-de-doo. Their problem. They were warned, and if they chose to ignore the warnings, they'll have to dig themselves out of it, or pay someone with a clue to do it for them. There are enough clueless designers around to keep consultants in business until Stardate 4096.
> Now imagine a world where you can only use XAML
Oh good grief. Get a life. It's just XML. It's not rocket science (or if it is, I know several unemployed rocket scientists who can help). Yes it's big. So is DocBook. Yes it's badly designed: the inclusion of executable code in a different syntax is a silly mistake, and only someone who has never used ISO 8879 before would allow Mixed Content in top-level element types. Unfortunately there are people like this at Microsoft, as well as plenty of people who do have a serious clue...but with a marketing-driven organisation, the marketing droids will always win, and if they want it that way, that's the way they'll get it.
It'll be a pig to write, a pig to maintain, a pig to understand, a pig to document, and a hog on resources, but that isn't really anything new. If it's XML, I can always open it and reprocess it using standard tools. Bill Gates (or his successors) will come to rue the day he bet the farm on XML.
The best cure for seasickness is to go and sit under a tree. --Spike Milligan
Claimer: yes, I do run the XML FAQ [www.ucc.ie]. No, my opinions are not those of the University I work for.
Ok, here is one I wonder about... (Score:4, Interesting)
We developers always like new and neat tricks, but yet it seems we are still building the same apps at the same speed. It took the Mono team about three years to build the Mono stack. Well, you know I could probably write most of my apps in three years.
I am not trying to rail C# or Java, as my point is that maybe we should be thinking about how to code properly. Maybe the language is not THAT big of an issue....
Re:Ok, here is one I wonder about... (Score:2, Interesting)