The managing editor of XML.com, Edd Dumbill, has just published an account of a 2-day meeting held last week in Novell's offices in Boston under the auspices of its Ximian division in Boston, MA.
The focus of this meeting was on the development of the Mono runtime, which is an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure standardized via ECMA for use of which Microsoft has granted a license under so-called "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms. The meeting was open to anyone interested in meeting the Novell Mono team and interested in Mono, C#, Gtk#, ASP.NET on Unix, Dashboard and other related technologies. It was the first time that the entire Mono team of 12 core developers had actually met face to face, and was therefore a historic occasion. Fifty or so people attended in all.
Mono now has a completely new user interface, MonoDevelop, which "looks and feels like a GNOME application," writes Dumbill.
"Also," he adds, "it can't be ignored that the Mono compiler is blisteringly fast."
Dumbill's report of the meeting ends with the following musings:
"Linux development is going to look very different if Mono succeeds in its goals. There's no doubt in de Icaza's mind: "To me C is dead. Except for the JIT!" Where does this place the future of the Linux desktop, and in particular, the project de Icaza himself founded five years ago, GNOME?
GNOME is currently pursuing a series of incremental point releases, with 2.6 due any moment now. The expectation for GNOME 3.0, however, is that a lot of the platform will use Mono, rather than the C implementation it has now. While no formal announcements have been made to this effect, it seems to be the strong hope of Ximian personnel."
"That will be an interesting journey," Dumbill adds, "as two other major backers of GNOME are IBM and Sun."
"The attitude of these companies to .NET is at the moment uncertain," he continues, "with both having a substantial interest in Java. The irony of Sun's successful (yet oddly-named) GNOME desktop - the 'Java Desktop System' - being based on .NET might be a little too much for them to swallow."
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Tokugawa wrote: .NET !=
Java. Period. I have been
sceptical too. But now ??
No.. I will not fallback.
I'm writting a simle Gtk#
app now...
in C# ?? no, in nemerle.
And it's easy and
clean...and fast..
Lloyd wrote: .NET is NOT
like Java
it looks like Java, as
much as Java looks like a
clean C++
but there is the same GAP
in differences ....
performance, easy (almost
direct) (native) DLL
call, a few keywords
grammar enhancement,
catch all for exception,
a single API for the
embeded and the desktop
(while PJava is dying,
J2ME has a completely
different GUI and, BTW,
PJava is so amazingly
slow whereas the
CompactFramework proved
to be almost as fast as a
native application)
on a personnal note while
Java proves more
productive than C it was
always somewhat
frustrating, whereas C#
proved to be everyday
better.
commmon try it instead of
speaking out of ignorance
James wrote: More likely
what will happen if
Miguel and co. decide to
base GNOME 3 on Mono is
that the project will
fork. Those of us who
want speed and
independence from
Microsoft will use the
"old" GNOME and those who
are not concerned about
performance or the threat
of litigation from
Microsoft can use the
Mono one.
hayden wrote: RAND
licencing usually means
"reasonable and
non-discriminatory" for
business. What MS can
(and probably will) do if
Mono gets any traction is
say, "We'll licence the
right to use all these
patents for 10 cents per
install". Perfectly
reasonable. Perfectly
non-discriminatory. Kills
any open source
implementation dead.
Game over.
dmiller wrote: >for use
of which Microsoft has
granted a license under
so-called
>"reasonable and
non-discriminatory"
terms.
I respect Miguel, but I
think he seriously
underestimates the risk
posed by MSFT's patents
in this area.
"Reasonable and
non-discriminatory"
(RAND) does not imply
"free". RAND was the
proposed licensing
requirement for W3C
patents that was howled
down by the community.
Given that MSFT is
willing to finance SCO to
use arguably illegal
tactics to destabilise
and discredit free
software, who would
expect that they are
above enforcing a small
fee for every patent
needed to implement Mono?
They needn't do this
immediately, in fact it
is in their interest to
wait until the technology
is widely adopted, so
they can slug everyone at
the same time. Note that
the usual legal defences
against "submarine...
omicronish wrote: Mono is
particularly interesting
for people like me, who
primarily do Windows
coding using Microsoft
technologies but are
still interested in
Linux. Sure, Java and C
developers probably don't
care about Mono, but I
would love to see a Linux
implementation of .NET
simply because of the
possibility of running my
current Windows .NET
applications on Linux
with minimal changes.
ignavus wrote: Maybe SWT
is the answer - it is
fast, Java, and uses
either Gtk or Motif on
Linux, while also running
on Win32 without a
recompile. Swing sucks
for speed, and AWT just
plain sucks.
cryptoluddite wrote:
There is almost no
difference between
C#/Mono/.NET and Java,
but almost no Linux
developers write in Java.
Check out your
distribution's packages
and you'll almost see
more JVMs than Java apps.
And for some reason Linux
developers avoid Java
like the plague, even
though it's got a
gazillion features that
make everything so much
easier (garbage
collection, huge
consistent class library,
security, etc). Put in a
GTK or QT library
interface instead of the
slow and huge Swing (that
Smalltalkers foisted on
Java) and you're golden
-- there's every reason
to use Java, especially
for applications.
The Linux culture has so
far prevented Linux from
taking the next step.
Just look the
(essentially) complete
lack of interest in gcj
(gcc open-source java).
Just look at the slow
pace of Mono. It isn't
goind t...
WombatConrol wrote: Mono
suffers from the fact
that they're trying to
play follow the leader by
following Microsoft's
implementation rather
than creating a system of
libraries from scratch.
Microsoft has a history
of pulling the old
"embrace and extend"
trick, and I fear
something similar may
happen here.
My guess is that
Microsoft will
significantly alter the
.NET APIs for Longhorn,
leaving Mono behind with
older legacy libraries
that are no longer
interoperable with the
Microsoft compiler and
the rest of the
Windows-using world.
Needless to say, that
would be bad for the Mono
team.
Still, if Mono can remain
independent, it could
very well have a bright
future. The Mono team has
done a great job of
implementing most of the
1.0 .NET API, and the mcs
compiler is pretty fast.
The GTK bindings are
quite nice for such an ...
Corporate raider Carl
Icahn started his proxy
fight for control of
Yahoo this morning,
beginning with the
classic Icahn opening,
the letter of reproach to
the Yahoo board telling
them they have acted
'irrationally and lost
the faith of shareholders
and Microsoft.'
'RIA' is slowly fading in
terms of its definition.
When I first started the
RIA Evangelism role in
Microsoft, I had this
nagging feeling that the
term RIA was just all
over the place. Depending
on which technology you
are backing and which
stream of alliance you
uphold, the truth is th
ASP.NET developers are
bored with traditional
books that outline
concepts in a lengthy
way. These books are good
if you like to learn the
features in a detailed
manner. However, by the
time the book is read, a
new version will be
released. Hence, many
learners including myself
prefer s
It seems as though
whenever I bring up PNRP
and its benefits, I am
immediately inundated
with a list of questions
or comments indicating
that Microsoft is
re-inventing the wheel
and that PNRP has already
been implemented before
in the form of ZeroConf
and, more specifically,
Apple's im
db4objects has announced
that its db4o object
database is now optimized
for Microsoft's LINQ.
With the new support,
developers can choose an
object-oriented optimized
engine without changing
the API or compromising
performance. db4object's
db4o database offers a
persistence solution to
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Corporate raider Carl
Icahn started his proxy
fight for control of
Yahoo this morning,
beginning with the
classic Icahn opening,
the letter of reproach to
the Yahoo board telling
them they have acted
'irrationally and lost
the faith of shareholders
and Microsoft.'
ASP.NET developers are
bored with traditional
books that outline
concepts in a lengthy
way. These books are good
if you like to learn the
features in a detailed
manner. However, by the
time the book is read, a
new version will be
released. Hence, many
learners including myself
prefer s
It seems as though
whenever I bring up PNRP
and its benefits, I am
immediately inundated
with a list of questions
or comments indicating
that Microsoft is
re-inventing the wheel
and that PNRP has already
been implemented before
in the form of ZeroConf
and, more specifically,
Apple's im
