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Microsoft

Mono Blocked from MS Conference 350

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the not-surprising dept.
Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that Microsoft has apparently blocked the Mono 'Birds-of-a-Feather' meeting from being held at their Professional Developers Conference for the second year in a row. Miguel de Icaza discusses the circumstances in his blog. From the blog: 'It is their conference, and they have every right to control what they will allow to be shown there, but they actively have misrepresented things.' Not terribly surprising but infuriating nonetheless.
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Mono Blocked from MS Conference More

Mono Blocked from MS Conference

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  • Is this news? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It is their conference, and they have every right to control what they will allow to be shown there. Is this news?

    • Re:Is this news? (Score:5, Informative)

      by NortWind ( 575520 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:13PM (#13587978)
      The news part is "but they actively have misrepresented things." Maybe MS misrepresenting things is not news either, but at least this is a new case of it. Mono didn't get enough votes to get in the conference, because they were not allowed on the supposedly "open" ballot.

    • More importantly (Score:3, Insightful)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 )
      when they drop the hammer on the GNOME/mono group for using their IP, they will be able to tell the truth in court (for once) that they have never supported this project. In addition,they never fully understood how much of their IP this project walked on (I wonder if they can do that with a straight face?).

      • Re:More importantly (Score:2, Interesting)

        by adolfojp ( 730818 )
        Eh, no.

        You can make GTK+ apps with MONO and C# for Linux without using any propietary MS IP.

        What they can pull the plug on in on ASP.NET. Of course, you can always run your ASP.NET app trough Grasshoper and turn it into a JAVA app ;-)
      • Nonsense. Mono is quite clean of Microsoft intellectual "property". There is no legal threat to the Mono project.

        More FUD please.

        • Re:More importantly (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 18, 2005 @12:16AM (#13588163)
          "Nonsense. Mono is quite clean of Microsoft intellectual "property". There is no legal threat to the Mono project."

          *said by a Novell representative* Oh, wait!

          http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=11889&comm ent_id=32499 [osnews.com]

          "1. It is not illegal to use mono or to develop mono.
          2. C#/.net libraries are ECMA standards

          However,

          1. Microsoft has the right to charge a RAND (reasonable and non-descriminatory) fee at any time for the use of these standards.
          2. They have never, ever, stated in any binding way that they would not do so in the future.
          3. *any* fee, even minimal would result in the instant death of any OSS project dependent on those standards.
          4. RAND can (and frequently does in the proprietary software world) mean several dollars per download! Or requiring build licenses for all developers producing binaries (every end user of gentoo for example!) that are in the hundreds of $ range. These are all reasonable and non-descriminatory in that context!

          Miguel De Icasa and Ximian/Mono people *know* this full well but don't want to admit how dangerous mono adoption is for the gnome community. They cite a BS casual mailing list post from the head engineer of .net as their claim that MS will never sue.

          See how much crap this is for yourself (from official Mono faq):

          http://web.archive.org/web/20030609164123/http://m ailserver.di.unip [archive.org].....
          http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#patents [go-mono.com]

          Jim Miller's off hand email is the *only* assurance anyone has every received that MS would never charge a RAND fee! If this were truly MS's commitment then they could release a statement or legally commit themselves to that! This email is not not not legally binding people! Until MS makes a legally binding agreement to never charge for use of these standards, it is not ok to use mono!

          See also Seth Nickels' blog on this subject "Why Mono is currently an unnacceptable risk":

          http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/2004/May [gnome.org]

          The two main arguments against what I'm saying are realy crap also:

          1. Java is also proprietary: Yes but Sun has licensed Java in such a way that they are legally prohibited from charging *any* royalties at all for existing releases of Java. We know with 100% certainty that Sun will never try and collect any RAND fee. Ever. The situation with Java is totally different for this reason.
          2. You are always infringing somewhere, worrying about this is wasting your time: True, there is always a danger of unknowingly infringing. However, in this case mono is knowingly using patented software. If MS decided to collect or sue, mono and gnome would have absolutely zero defense! Furthermore, MS is well known for destroying threatening companies when it suits them to do so! They have done this many times in the past. Remeber how they *lost* an anti-trust lawsuit? It is because they are agressive, unscrupulous and incredibly rich. They can and will crush gnome if gnome threatens MS! Mono is the ultimate submarine. We build it, integrate it so gnome can't live without it, then they kill gnome by charging for builds. Bam. Gnome is dead on that day.

          Take Away: Mono is cool but way too dangerous. Smart people and companies are staying away from it (which turns out to be *most* companies bye the way. That is why Redhat and others are pushing Java as an alternative). People who back mono either have motive (ximian), are misinformed (most of the people on this forum), or just dumb (people who are really drooling over the potential of mono so they are ignoring the risk, probably ximian and some gnome developers again)"

    • Re:Is this news? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by markdavis ( 642305 )
      "It is their conference, and they have every right to control what they will allow to be shown there. Is this news?"

      No. It is business as usual. I can't believe anyone would expect otherwise! .Net is a lot more about .Lockin than about .open or .compatible or .competition.

      de Icaza better duck from flying chairs.....

  • Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lightyear4 ( 852813 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:12PM (#13587976)
    Sounds like left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.. Today's early "Race to Linux" thread about porting .Net linked to this [internetnews.com] article, which explicitly mentions mono as being an allowable language. This just seems odd to me, expecially because its also sponsored by the very same Microsoft Professional Developers Conversation..
    • Hands? Don't you mean tentacles?
    • Right. It doesn't.

      I used to work at Microsoft and they have so much disorganized legacy strategy floating around that effectively keeps them from doing anything threating.

      Ever wonder why Microsoft offered help to the Mono project at first? Because they wanted to make .Net into a Java killer. And they recognized that to do this, it must be cross platform. And to have an edge on Java, it must be an open standard (which Java is not). So Microsoft tried to engineer the perfect Java Killer. Unfortunately for them, .Net is likely to be a more effective Windows killer than a Java killer..... So now they are stuck. They are still *trying* to kill Java, but in the end they are realizing that they have built their own worst enemy.

      So this largely explains their dilema, their disorganization, and their self-defeating strategy.
      • That's a good insight. I remember .Net being presented back in 2001 as the next Java, with the word "Framework" substituted for "Virtual Machine". As the years have gone by, I keep waiting for it to "become" Java, but all we've got to show for it is an architecture with the speed of Java (slow) and the portability of a native Win32 exe (not portable at all).
        • As the years have gone by, I keep waiting for it to "become" Java, but all we've got to show for it is an architecture with the speed of Java (slow) and the portability of a native Win32 exe (not portable at all).

          And the security of ActiveX.....

          Actually, it is not too unportable via Mono, but I worry about a non-sandboxed security model based on digital signatures.
          • The security of ActiveX is no worse than any other natively executed piece of code. The problem is not in the controls themselves but the way MS has traditionally encouraged sites to use them and "trained" users to automatically download and install them.

            A benign but exploitable control signed by MS (for example) can be forced on a user by a malicious site and then used to compromise their machine. i.e. the trust model is completely broken.

            Microsoft have been increasingly deemphasizing ActiveX because o

      • So now they are stuck. They are still *trying* to kill Java, but in the end they are realizing that they have built their own worst enemy.

        Heh. This is just like IE and Firefox.

        By using the monopolic practice of embedding Internet Explorer in Windows, Microsoft opened to the gates (no pun intended) to the information superhighway, without realizing that this would allow people to get organized and fight against their own monopoly - not only with Firefox, but also with other competing projects like OpenOffice.org, and now, Mono.

        This is so.... ironic. And funny. Reminds me of the typical story about a wizard who summons a monster to rule the world, and then the monster kills him.

        • Re:Building their own worst enemy. (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          By using the monopolic practice of embedding Internet Explorer in Windows, Microsoft opened to the gates (no pun intended) to the information superhighway, without realizing that this would allow people to get organized and fight against their own monopoly - not only with Firefox, but also with other competing projects like OpenOffice.org, and now, Mono.

          The thing is Microsoft *hated* the Internet and they didn't want to support it, but they had no choice. Microsft themselves admits they were late to adopt t

        • Monster throws chair (Score:3, Informative)

          by putko ( 753330 )
          Reminds me of the typical story about a wizard who summons a monster to rule the world, and then the monster kills him.

          Or instead of killing him, the monster just throws a chair at him.

          Great analogy. But really, what more do you expect -- if you read up on innovation, you'll see that this happens all the time [amazon.com] -- Micro$oft isn't going to cannibalize themselves voluntarily, but it will get them in the end.

        • Not coherent (Score:5, Insightful)

          by BerntB ( 584621 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @03:03AM (#13588549)
          By using the monopolic practice of embedding Internet Explorer in Windows, Microsoft opened to the gates (no pun intended) to the information superhighway, without realizing that this would allow people to get organized and fight against their own monopoly
          You are claiming that internet use and open source organization on the net wouldn't have happened without Internet Explorer?!

          That is some strange history writing...

      • Sadly, .NET is no Windows killer. You just have to look at enough .NET apps to realise that many will only run on Windows. I'm know there are Mono / .NET apps out there that are clean but many apps that use PInvoke or COM interop to function. These are doomed to never work with Mono. You can bet that this inclues many apps ported from VB6 to .NET.

        On top of that Microsoft is pushing things called Application Blocks (ABs) which a useful bits of functionality such as logging and caching. There is already an

      • Re:Left hand, right hand (former Microsoftie here) (Score:4, Interesting)

        by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @07:21AM (#13588993)
        I used to work at Microsoft and they have so much disorganized legacy strategy floating around that effectively keeps them from doing anything threating.

        There have been a lot of reports out of Redmond to the effect that Microsoft is being strangled by internal politics and endless meetings. The most recent report, and a very significant one, is a cover story article [businessweek.com] in next week's Business Week magazine.

        In that article, Ballmer comes across as being out of touch and in denial of the problems. It is no wonder why Microsoft is unable to put forth a coherent and consistent strategy on anything.

    • This is what we call "bureaucracy."

      News agencies will pick up Microsoft's Race-to-Linux, but not Mono's Birds-of-a-Feather.
    • I worked at Microsoft game division a year prior the xbox launch. MS is SO clueless, they had projects for the PS2 going on. Needless to say one day they had a huge meeting...

      Just to say I'm not surprised

  • Mono Cock Blocked at MS Conference (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:13PM (#13587982)
    There I fixed that for you.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:19PM (#13588005)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I recall reading something a long while ago that claim that the samba guys knew more about the workings of SMB than MS does.

      I wouldn't find a statement surprising as when you deal with a *project* you can do as much or as little as you want, thus its members stay stable and pass info around. With a *product* you have employees who jockey for status, don't pass around info, come and go.

      being a control freak doesn't always get you to the place you want to go. (Today?)
    • Does "Samba" ring a bell?

      If it's the same bell that comes in the phrase "for whom the bell tolls", and the answer of the question is "Microsoft", then yes, I agree with you :)

  • lay down with dogs... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Colonel Panic ( 15235 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:19PM (#13588008)
    Wake up with fleas

  • Something for MS to Think About (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Comatose51 ( 687974 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:20PM (#13588010) Homepage
    "I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends." -Abraham Lincoln

    I'm not convinced that MS' only road to victory is to destroy everyone. I know it has kind of worked for them in the past but maybe they should consider other alternatives. I don't understand why they don't port .Net over to Linux. People who are using Linux now aren't going to stop because there's no .Net. So what's the point? Why not just get half a loaf of bread and get people to use .Net at least even if it's not on Windows. If MS really wants .Net to take off, they need to ensure that it's adopted by as many people as possible. Otherwise people will continue to look to Java and other languages for cross-platform applications.

    • If they ported .NET to Linux, people wouldn't have to buy Microsoft Servers.

      Java runs everywhere, but it makes more money for IBM and Oracle than it does for Sun ;-)
    • It does not matter whether you don't believe that "MS' only road to victory is to destroy everyone". It is obvious that they believe it and it reflects in their behaviour. They have committed themselves to that path for so long it is now nearly impossible for them to go in any other direction. They have virutally made the whole of the rest of the computer industry their enemy.
    • "Zip it, Abe."
      - John Wilkes Booth
    • If MS really wants .Net to take off, they need to ensure that it's adopted by as many people as possible.
      But they don't. .NET is a tool to promote Windows, not the other way around.
    • If it has worked for them in the past, WHY should they consider other alternatives?

      Microsoft is utterly convinced they can get the ENTIRE LOAF of bread, plus take over the entire bakery, so why settle for half a loaf?

      Until they start losing substantial amounts of money, don't hold your breath for any changes. Look what IBM had to go through back in the 90s before they became the Linux savior. People were actually predicting the death of IBM. THAT'S what it takes to change for many companies.
    • Think about MS's core business areas: Windows and Office. It doesn't make sense for the company to embrace projects or groups that undermine those business areas. The company uses .Net as a way to enhance Windows, so while they are supportive of it, they're going to keep an eye on their core business first.

      This isn't MS being monopolistic, it's just good business practice. Apple's core business areas are OS and hardware (and now music), which is why Jobs killed off the 3rd party hardware. IBM's core bus

  • Hmpf (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dedazo ( 737510 )
    The PCD is Microsoft's event. It's for people who work with Microsoft technologies on the Microsoft platform. Maybe if Icaza had not sold the shop to Microsoft's competition [novell.com] then maybe they would have had a chance to get in there. Gawd knows Icaza has a lot of fans within Microsoft - he's respected by a lot of people in the mothership, especially those working with the most interesting technologies, such as Indigo/WFC.

    But when the guy essentially works for Novell, what the fuck did he expect? They didn't

    • Re:Hmpf (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Keith Russell ( 4440 ) * on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:45PM (#13588085) Journal

      You're missing two important points:

      1. This was not an official presentation that was supposed to be approved and sanctioned by Microsoft as part of PDC. This was an after-hours BOF session operated by the independent International .NET Association (INETA). At least, they were independent, until they proved with this ballot snafu that they cower under Microsoft's whip hand.
      2. (And I can't stress this enough) INETA LIED TO MIGUEL DE ICAZA. He got two confirmations that his BOF session proposal was accepted, which means that it should have been on the ballot. After that, he heard deafening silence, before finally getting a rejection on the day accept/reject notices went out. Only then did he find out that INETA deceived him, and his BOF wasn't on the ballot in the first place.

      • Re:Hmpf (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dedazo ( 737510 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @12:13AM (#13588151) Journal
        That's misleading and sensationalist. Miguel de Icaza knows perfectly well what INETA is, what they do and how they operate. They do not "cower under the hand of Microsoft", they are very much married to Microsoft. BOF or no, the presentation would have taken place in the context of the PDC. Miguel de Icaza works for Novell. Whatever yahoo at INETA that thought it was a good idea to bring in an employee of Novell to the PDC didn't clear it with Microsoft. They didn't "lie" to Icaza, INETA probably raised the issue with the MSFT people late in the game and got reamed for it.

        It's disingenious of Icaza to cry himself a river when he knows very well how things work. He's no stranger to Microsoft satellite orgs like INETA, and I expect he hasn't forgotten Novell pays his salary.

        I'm not trying to prove Icaza 'deserved it', this whole deal still sucks. I'm making the point that he should have seen this coming and should have cleared it with someone other than some teenager at INETA. He knows enough people at Microsoft to do that. A simple email to friggin' Robert Scoble would have sufficed.

        • Re:Hmpf (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @01:06AM (#13588288) Homepage

          So then why did INETA accept the application for a slot? If they didn't think it was appropriate, why not simply reject the request for a slot, instead of trying to act like it didn't happen?

          • Re:Hmpf (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Keith Russell ( 4440 ) *
            So then why did INETA accept the application for a slot? If they didn't think it was appropriate, why not simply reject the request for a slot, instead of trying to act like it didn't happen?

            Exactly! Miguel was led to believe that his BOF made it on the ballot on merit, without having to call in any favors at Microsoft.

  • Well, it does seem to confirm... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <`imipak' `at' `yahoo.com'> on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:29PM (#13588035) Homepage Journal
    ...the statements I've been making for a while now that I simply don't see Microsoft playing fair over Mono, the same way they've attacked all of their competitors using ethically dubious means or outright illegal methods.


    It is correct to say that Microsoft can choose who they want to attend the conference. There's no disputing that. Technically, they don't even have to give a reason. HOWEVER, when a reason is given and it is blatantly and willfully deceptive or untrue, then it is not so much the barring as the use of FUD to damage competition unfairly.


    Forget the barring. Ignore it. It isn't the important part of the situation. What is important is whether it is correct to say that other conference-goers are being given a line intended to intimidate or coerce. THAT is the important part, the conference itself is irrelevant.


    You should also forget the rights a normal competitor has in the US. As a legally-declared monopolist, supposedly monitored for potential malpractice as ordered by the courts, and as an organization fighting the necessity for increased openness as decided by EU courts, Microsoft is (in theory) limited in what it can do to use negative advertising for causing willful harm to competitors.


    If this was a "normal" situation, with a "normal" company, very little of this would matter one way or the other. This is NOT a normal situation, and Microsoft was ruled a monopolist by both the US and EU, making it definitely NOT a typical player in a free market.


    Actually, the EU situation is probably the most relevant here, as it is entirely possible that the example of Mono may well be usable by the EU as proof that Microsoft's counter-case over the penalties and openness of its standards are without merit. If Microsoft is willing to obstruct a free market, even when in court for doing so, then it cannot be trusted to not do so by choice at any other time.

    • well the thing is, those kind of tactics and behavior isn't ethical for any company to engage in, let alone an illegal monopolist.

      so i definitely don't condone bad business practices from any company, regardless of how i feel about them or their potential for monopoly etc.

      but as you can see, the courts aren't doing a darn thing to change their ways. they're doing all the things they've been doing since they were "caught". the courts are obviously not doing their job but good luck trying to remedy that situa
    • As a legally-declared monopolist...
      You misunderstand the law. Microsoft has been declared to have a monopoly in the x86 desktop market. They haven't been declared to have a monopoly in the virtual machine market, the conference market, the server market or any other market I could imagine relavent to a .NET/Mono discussion.

      The whole "declared monopolist" thing is silly. All they are not permitted to do in the US is leverage their desktop monopoly to gain competitive advantage in other spaces.
      • All they are not permitted to do in the US is leverage their desktop monopoly to gain competitive advantage in other spaces.
        What the fuck do you think .NET is, if not a way to leverage their desktop monopoly? Leveraging their desktop monopoly is very nearly the only thing Microsoft ever does!

  • This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by c ( 8461 ) <beauregardcp@gmail.com> on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:33PM (#13588050)
    Microsoft is behaving exactly the same way they've always behaved.

    Look, Miguel, it's pretty simple. You go play in the sandbox with a reknown bully, you eat sand. Most people figure this out before their sixth birthday. You want to do this mono thing, fine, but you _are_ going to get screwed every time you venture into Microsoft's playground and you aren't going to get a lick of sympathy from the rest of the world when it happens.

    c.

    • Re:This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by demachina ( 71715 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @12:17AM (#13588166)
      Its somewhat worse than that, Miguel has not only wasted his time, but he's suckered a large number of others developers in to expending massive effort on Mono. It is interesting and all, but it was as nearly as I can tell a complete waste of time, that could have been better spent on Java or standards not completely dominated by Microsoft. Now if there were interesting .NET web sites all over the Internet I wanted to use and had to have Mono to use on any non Windows platform then yes it would serve its purpose, I just don't think I've encountered such a web site. Are there any?

      Not sure I grok why Miguel has such icon status in the open source world, he doesn't seem to have very good judgment.
      • Not sure I grok why Miguel has such icon status in the open source world, he doesn't seem to have very good judgment.

        Miguel has excellent judgement.

        1. Persuade a bunch of open source developers to work for you for free and build a copy of .Net
        2. Release it under a open but restrictive license like GPL to get more and more people into it
        3. Find a big corporate who hates Microsoft and wants more rights to this MS-killer and will pay big time for acess to Mono under less restrictive license
        4. PROFIT!!!

      • Re:This is news? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dcam ( 615646 )
        I like what Miguel is doing with mono.

        The reason I like it that I write C# for a living. I maintain a web application. Originally this was written in classic asp. It is currently a hybrid with some classic asp and some .Net (about 50-50), running SQL Server as a backend.

        With mono there is the possibility that I can port this to run under Linux. Postgress being the replacement for SQL Server. Now I haven't looked at this in depth yet, but in a year or so (by which time the migration to .Net will be complete)

  • On empires.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:37PM (#13588059) Journal
    The Roman empire, as others, was built by dominating all possible enemies, or politically playing them off against each other. This works okay for a while, but eventually it always seems to lead to the empire's undoing.

    The Roman Catholic church, following the fall of the Roman empire, in turn conquered much of the world by assimilation and adaptation.

    Perhaps MS will take this lesson from history one day before it is too late?
    • The Roman empire, as others, was built by dominating all possible enemies, or politically playing them off against each other. This works okay for a while, but eventually it always seems to lead to the empire's undoing.

      The undoing took quite some time. Four hundred years in the West. Eight hundred years in the East.

  • Linux conferences. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by atomic-penguin ( 100835 ) <wolfe21.marshall@edu> on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:39PM (#13588070) Homepage Journal
    I wouldn't expect Microsoft to have a .NET Birds of a Feather group at a Linux conference. It probably wouldn't go over well with the attendees, I can just imagine everyone attending the MS BOF pointing out how what MS hasn't done for Linux. Furthermore, the sponsors may have political issues with them having a slot in the conference.
     
    It seems very silly to hold them to a double standard. Microsoft is under no obligation to cater to Novell and their associates. Just as you would not expect groups associated with Linux to be under any obligation to cater for Microsoft.
    • It seems very silly to hold them to a double standard. Microsoft is under no obligation to cater to Novell and their associates. Just as you would not expect groups associated with Linux to be under any obligation to cater for Microsoft.

      Sure, no one is complaining that the Mono session wasn't allowed, it is more about the manner in which it was done. "Birds of a Feather" was supposed to be a set of open meetings - anyone could suggest a topic, the topics would get listed, then voted on, an the top n topics

    • Re:Linux conferences. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:58PM (#13588116) Homepage
      Except that they're not held to a double standard. Microsoft sits on the boards for OpenGL and a lot of other standards. Microsoft has been to Linuxworld and other open-source or Linux conferences. They also show up at Macworld and other Apple conferences.

      They might grumble a lot, but Open Source supporters seem to have given Microsoft as many rights as anyone else in the community may have. Microsoft doing a MONO/.net promotion at a Linux conference would be completely acceptable.

  • Power to the... sigh... the Man (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vivarin ( 106778 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:41PM (#13588073) Homepage
    I don't understand how people can get so enamoured of the .NET world, devote their professional careers to C# and the MS universe, and then wonder what happened when MS decides to zig when they want to zag.

    Seriously. I see Spolsky and Sink congratulating themselves on how well they've managed to sneak out of the MS sandbox with clever PHP translation schemes and the like.

    Gosh, guys, you don't have to give Redmond the remote control to your shock collars just because you want a little bit of leverage writing code.

    Work a little bit harder and you can be free of Microsoft and in control of your own destiny. You won't see the Mozilla foundation complaining about how .NET just broke all their code in Windows Vista, but you can bet you'll see it on the blogs of less experienced coders.

  • Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and deluded (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:46PM (#13588090)
    1. It is not illegal to use mono or to develop mono.
    2. C#/.net libraries are ECMA standards

    However,

    1. Microsoft has the right to charge a RAND (reasonable and non-descriminatory) fee at any time for the use of these standards.
    2. They have never, ever, stated in any binding way that they would not do so in the future.
    3. *any* fee, even minimal would result in the instant death of any OSS project dependent on those standards.
    4. RAND can (and frequently does in the proprietary software world) mean several dollars per download! Or requiring build licenses for all developers producing binaries (every end user of gentoo for example!) that are in the hundreds of $ range. These are all reasonable and non-descriminatory in that context!

    Miguel De Icasa and Ximian/Mono people *know* this full well but don't want to admit how dangerous mono adoption is for the gnome community. They cite a BS casual mailing list post from the head engineer of .net as their claim that MS will never sue.

    See how much crap this is for yourself (from official Mono faq):

    http://web.archive.org/web/20030609164123/http://m ailserver.di.unip [archive.org].....
    http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#patents [go-mono.com]

    Jim Miller's off hand email is the *only* assurance anyone has ever received that MS would never charge a RAND fee! If this were truly MS's commitment then they could release a statement or legally commit themselves to that! This email is not not not legally binding people! Until MS makes a legally binding agreement to never charge for use of these standards, it is not ok to use mono!

    See also Seth Nickels' blog on this subject "Why Mono is currently an unnacceptable risk":

    http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/2004/May [gnome.org]

    The two main arguments against what I'm saying are realy crap also:

    1. Java is also proprietary:

    Yes but Sun has licensed Java in such a way that they are legally prohibited from charging *any* royalties at all for existing releases of Java. We know with 100% certainty that Sun will never try and collect any RAND fee. Ever. The situation with Java is totally different for this reason. Even if Sun changed its mind or was purchased by a less generous company (like MS for example), existing releases of Java and alternative implementations based on existing released specs would always remain free as in beer. The no version of the .net ecma standards ever has been comparably free.

    2. You are always infringing somewhere, worrying about this is wasting your time:

    True, there is always a danger of unknowingly infringing. However, in this case mono is knowingly using patented software. If MS decided to collect or sue, mono and gnome would have absolutely zero defense! Furthermore, MS is well known for destroying threatening companies when it suits them to do so! They have done this many times in the past. Remeber how they *lost* an anti-trust lawsuit? It is because they are agressive, unscrupulous and incredibly rich and illegal monopoly that used its power to destroy competition. They can and will crush gnome if gnome threatens MS! Mono is the ultimate submarine. We build it, integrate it so gnome can't live without it, then they kill gnome by charging for builds. Bam. Gnome is dead on that day.

    Take Away: Mono is cool but way too dangerous. Smart people and companies are staying away from it (which turns out to be *most* companies by the way. That is why Redhat and others are pushing Java as an alternative). People who back mono either have motive (ximian), are misinformed (most of the people on this forum), or just dumb (people who are really drooling over the potential of mono so they are ignoring the risk, probably ximian a

    • Re:Mono: **Listen up! Trolls, Uninformed and delud (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jsebrech ( 525647 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @07:28AM (#13589014)
      We build it, integrate it so gnome can't live without it, then they kill gnome by charging for builds. Bam. Gnome is dead on that day.

      Harsh as this may sound, I am actually hoping this happens. It would have a number of very necessary consequences:

      - the entire OSS community would learn to never ever rely on proprietary tech again, it would lead to a code purge in the major projects, where the line between open source and proprietary has been getting increasingly blurry (like the linux driver including proprietary firmware, or X relying on proprietary drivers for credible 3D use).

      - with gnome dead everyone would standardize on KDE, which would be a dramatic advancement. Not that I have anything against gnome, KDE could die just as well, but regardless, either these guys work out a way to truly have their desktops interact, or one of them is going to have to die. The current situation leads to too many problems that the end user sees for a truly useful desktop product to ever result from it.

      - the EU would likely go after MS again. This is always a good thing. No explanation necessary ;)
      • Harsh as this may sound, I am actually hoping this happens. It would have a number of very necessary consequences:

        This happened with the whole BitMover/BitKeeper(TM:) debacle, and it seems that nobody had learned from it.

      • logic meltdown (Score:3, Insightful)

        by goon ( 2774 )
        "... the entire OSS community would learn to never ever rely on proprietary tech again, ... (continues) ... with gnome dead everyone would standardize on KDE ..."

        *sigh*
         

  • GET A CLUE! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:48PM (#13588094)
    Here you hear once more that developers who buy into .NET are not interested in developing or targeting other platforms other than Windows. Those who would want to have Linux then rather use PHP, Perl, etc. That is so crazy and ignorant that it doesn't make any sense! Or maybe, the people expressing those opinions are not "Real Software Engineers" -- or good business people for that matter.

    It is NOT an all or nothing proposition. You can develop in Visual Studio and very well target Linux, Mac OS X and anything else that runs Mono. As much as I use the totally cool MonoDevelop (a.k.a Bad Ass IDE of the future), I still use Visual Studio .NET 2003 quite regularly. In fact, now that I have discovered the beauty of VMWare, it will be that much more comfortable to create projects in Visual Studio that are resting on a VMWare shared folder and use them instantly in the Linux host.

    But make no mistake, that is just one of those rich kids whim of mine. I have, for the past two years, used a Windows box that has mapped drives to my Samba enabled Linux boxes to achieved the same effect.

    One must also keep in mind the great utility of Mono's Windows incarnation. Thanks to my add-in (sorry for the shameless plug) you can use Visual Studio and test in Mono without having a Linux or Mac OS box anywhere in sight. In some cases, I very purposefully create Mono applications using handy dandy Visual Studio .NET 2003 with the intention to deploy and run in Windows boxes whose only .NET Framework runtime is the Mono for Windows SDK.

    In the early 1980's IBM put out the specifications for the PC and regardless of what were their intentions back then, the world of IT has become what it is today because of all of the innovations that we later had by contributors like Compaq, Dell, HP, Apple, Toshiba and many others.

    Today, being a .NET developer that only wants to use .NET in Windows would be as silly as a PC user back in 1987 who only wanted to use IBM hardware.

    I say we have an extremely similar situation with the original submission from Microsoft to the ECMA of the C# language and the CLI specification. Now, in 2005, you have a great group of contributors that include Novell, Microsoft, IBM, HP and many others.

    But perhaps the most striking difference from my IBM PC analogy is the role of the individual contributor. You see, I want to suggest that Open Source .NET will be much bigger -- and better for everyone -- than Microsoft .NET alone.

    No really, from a business perspective, you would have to be brain damaged to create an application or system of any sort and not hope that it can run in as many platforms (meaning customers that are willing to pay) as possible!

    So you mean to tell me that there is some .NET developer at the PDC or elsewhere that would not grin once he/she sees their application running on Linux or Mac OS X?

    For GOD sake, GET A CLUE!!!!

  • .NET is a Diversion Maneuver (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rednaxel ( 532554 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @12:07AM (#13588135) Homepage Journal
    It hurts Java AND Linux at the same time, using the same trick for both: luring developers. Every minute a Java developer wastes using C# is a minute that he/she is not using Java. Every time a Linux developer tries Mono, he/she is wasting resources in a doomed technology. Even if .NET is headed to be a total failure - as a technology - at some point in the future, it's already a success as a marketing tool: it's slowing down Java and Linux.

    It's obvious that Mono will NEVER be able to run every .NET application. As soon as Microsoft starts seeing Mono as a thread, something will happen.

    BTW, where's the big wave of .NET applications?

    • My company is currently converting all their software from VB6 to C#. We aren't a big company, but we are switching. Of course I see this as a colossal mistake and believe that this will further delegate us to only a small margin of our target audience (hospitals in need of document management and archiving). Honestly I'd like to see this become a secure web-based product built on an open platform. Paying the Microsoft tax is one of our biggest expenses, and we're currently in a tight cashflow situation

    • Re:.NET is a Diversion Maneuver (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @02:41AM (#13588515) Homepage Journal
      ``It hurts Java AND Linux at the same time, using the same trick for both: luring developers. Every minute a Java developer wastes using C# is a minute that he/she is not using Java.''

      Frankly, I don't see it that way. When introduced, .NET was a better technology than Java. Instead of being a platform designed to be targetted by a single language, .NET enabled interoperability between languages. Microsoft has worked hard to improve this interoperability, even making changes to their VM to better suit functional languages. C# also had some really good features (generics come to mind) that Java lacked. So when a Java developer is ``is not using Java'', perhaps they're simply evaluating other, possibly better options.

      Because of .NET's advantages over Java, it has forced Java to get better. Java 5 is a great improvement over Java 4, and I doubt that this would have come as quickly had it not been for .NET. Java is hurt by .NET in terms of market share, but I'd say it's rather helped in terms of quality.

      Finally, I don't see your point about .NET hurting Linux. How many people are not using Linux because of .NET? How has .NET harmed the quality of Linux? If anything, .NET makes Linux better and more attractive; better because Linux now offers it as an additional choice (through Mono and Portable.NET), and more attractive because applications written in .NET will require less porting than applications using the win32 or MFC APIs.
      • .Net is not and never will be compatible. I have not even heard of any applications being portable between the 2.

        I don't mean hello world programs either. .NET is a way to migrate linux users to Windows and no one with a brain would use mono.net on any production based webserver. Its just not stable and it will always be behind Microsoft's offerings. If you want .NET then you must use Windows.

        Or face the task of a nightmarish scenario. Besides who says MS wont pull the plug on Mono? I was reading another ar
  • How difficult would it be to find a 3rd-party location for a Mono BOF? A few enterprising souls, a restaurateur who's willing to go out on a limb in exchange for some damn good geek cred (and his/her name on Slashdot, most likely) and Micro$haft can't do a damn thing to stop it.

  • de Icaza (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    de Icaza reportedly hurled his chair across the room and yelled, "I'll bury them!"

  • Infuriating? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aCapitalist ( 552761 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @02:40AM (#13588511)
    Miguel didn't say anything about "infuriating" in his blog. I'm sure the anonymous coward or ScuttleMonkey (whoever added that) was really infuriated (rolls eyes) over this.

    So much wasted energy on rabid hatred of Microsoft. Give it a rest

  • I don't get Mono (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 21chrisp ( 757902 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @03:37AM (#13588601)
    The whole concept of Mono is somewhat confounding to me. Why not just implement something new? Why spend so much time recoding the .NET API?? When I first heard of Mono I thought that it was cool that existing .NET apps could potentially run in Linux. Then I realized that I don't give a ____ about these apps anyway. And I gaurantee I won't bother running some GPhoto type application in Windows. Anyone who uses this is just going to be using Linux anyway. On the server end.. I have to wonder what the ROI would be for porting apps from Windows-IIS/.NET to Linux/Mono.NET. It seems like a complete waste of time. Also, most people that write cross platform apps simply don't care about .NET and won't bother learning it, even if it really is as cool as Miguel says. Most of the Mac/Linux types quit coding on Windows a long time ago. Those that still do code on Windows usually do it as their job, which is usually in a position they've had for 5+ years.

    There are so many other ways to create cross platform code in a non-MS API. QT and WxWidgets are both quite nice. I do admit that I might consider Mono over Java though. If only just to avoid the "Java trap." Of course this only matters if I want to do some GPL type coding.

    Sooner or later MS is going to put out .NETv2, complete with a whole new API and super-duper-mega-active server pages. Of course all of the IIS users (which will remain 99% of the .NET users) will pretty much have to "upgrade." Then the Mono developers get to do it all over again when they could have just started from an existing cross-platform kit or just created their own. Mono seems so much like a ship going way off course whith no one on board willing to question the path.

    I hope I'm wrong though. If what the Mono developers say is true than it will be really exciting down the line. I've become pretty skeptical over the years though.. It's already been over a year since Mono 1.0 and I can't name one commonly used cross platform Mono/.NET app. There certainly seems to be way more resources getting dumped into it than results coming out.

    *prepares for the flames*

  • When people tell me .NET is cross-platform... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 18, 2005 @05:20AM (#13588770)
    ...because Mono exists, I tell them: "Yeah right, and Windows is cross-platform because WINE exists"

  • Said it many times (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jav1231 ( 539129 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @08:23AM (#13589165)
    I've said it before and I'll say it again: Mono is basically a dance with the Devil. Now Mono is surprised they have fleas after laying the big Dog, but I'm mixing metaphors. With M$ themselves distancing themselves from .Net proper Mono is facing less adoption.

  • What did they expect? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ChaoticCoyote ( 195677 ) on Sunday September 18, 2005 @08:55AM (#13589265) Homepage

    The entire Mono project is based on the false assumption that Microsoft will bestow its blessings on those who clone .Net (and its tools). Given Microsoft's predatory and paranoid history, I can't imagine why Miguel persists in his Quixotic quest.

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