This is really great. The future of Mono was not assured there for a while, but things are really looking up now. I guess the conspiracy theories about Microsoft trying to crush Mono by proxy through Attachmate were way off base.
Why would anyone think that MS wants to crush Mono? Not only does it not make sense in general, but MS and Mono have worked together for years. Hell, the lead dev of F# is speaking at Monospace this weekend: http://monospace.us/
Indeed. If I were in Microsoft's shoes I would be inclined to think Mono is actually beneficial to MS. Mono's existence allows Windows developers to imagine (solely in their minds) that their stuff runs on Linux. It's "cross-platform". Of course, if they actually try to do that in a serious way, they will discover that Mono is inferior to "real" .Net. And, no offense to Icaza, but by nature of their position, Mono will always be #2 in some sense as it has to play catch-up with MS.
No "srs bsns" enterprise .NET developers care about Mono. But the vast, vast majority of their stuff would, if necessary, run on Linux via Mono without much trouble--because most people just don't use the complex stuff that Mono doesn't support.
I use Mono for my current project (a cross-platform game library) because it, unlike everything else aside from C/C++, is capable of effectively targeting OS X, Linux, Android, and iOS. .NET gives me Windows, Xbox 360, and WP7.
As a former C# developer who did try to run some stuff on Mono, I don't think it's an unfair description at all. First, some personal anecdotes:
- Wrote a brief (4 hours perhaps) Windows Forms app that did some math. Ran it on Mono. To Mono's credit, it did run. But to my horror, it actually computed incorrect results.
- I used a popular UI widget library for .Net. Turns out though most of it was written in C#, it had a number of Windows-only DLL imports, and could not run on Mono.
- At the time, ASP.net support was barely functional, if it existed at all. To be fair, I'm not sure if this is still the case or not.
Further, I will offer this additional argument. It is widely known that Java's promise of "write once, run anywhere" is a joke. Not that cross-platform Java can't be done (in fact it can), but it does take deliberate effort to ensure cross-platform support. And this is Java, which has official support for Linux (i.e., the JVM code on Linux is basically the same JVM code on Windows).
Contrast the Java situation with MS .Net, which does not have official support for Linux, but does have the option of Mono on Linux. MS .Net and Mono are two totally separate environments built out of separate code-bases. In this situation you are almost guaranteed to run into major migration headaches, if not outright barriers.
Now perhaps you are running from Mono from the start; well of course that is going to work. My original point isn't that Mono doesn't work when running code actually targeted to it; that may well be the case. My point is that Mono gives traditional .Net developers the false belief that they can run their Windows-targeted .Net code on Linux easily. For most, or at least many, that is simply not the case.
> Not that cross-platform Java can't be done (in fact it can), but it does take deliberate effort to ensure cross-platform support
To be fair, at least for desktop apps, we are down to three platforms now. If it runs on Linux, Mac and Windows, you are about 100% covered. The days of having dozens of vendor-specific Java runtimes around are pretty much over. And as much as I like my IBM RS/6000 workstation, I wouldn't try to run Eclipse on it.
wes-exp is 100% correct. It took several months of effort to get our srs bsns app working with mono. Everything worked just like it did on Windows, except for all the things that didn't. Death by a thousand paper cuts.
> If I were in Microsoft's shoes I would be inclined to think Mono is actually beneficial to MS.
It is. It creates a lot of potential targets for the mother of all patent lawsuits (IIRC, the community promise only covers the ECMA standard). Don't forget that, when Microsoft exits a market, it still owns a lot of patents in that space and can thus act like an NPE.
> they will discover that Mono is inferior to "real" .Net.
FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD. Come now, has MS acted against Mono in any way, ever? They've helped them at every step, directly. I know you like to troll MS-related threads, but really man.
Would it be if it succeeded grabbing market share from Windows? Definitely.
I fail to see your reasoning equaling "something didn't happen" with "something can't ever happen and you are a lunatic for believing it can".
And I know I get downvoted every time I point this out. Reminding people Microsoft never plays nice only makes me unpopular, but it doesn't make me wrong.
Comments
This is really great. The future of Mono was not assured there for a while, but things are really looking up now. I guess the conspiracy theories about Microsoft trying to crush Mono by proxy through Attachmate were way off base.
Why would anyone think that MS wants to crush Mono? Not only does it not make sense in general, but MS and Mono have worked together for years. Hell, the lead dev of F# is speaking at Monospace this weekend: http://monospace.us/
Indeed. If I were in Microsoft's shoes I would be inclined to think Mono is actually beneficial to MS. Mono's existence allows Windows developers to imagine (solely in their minds) that their stuff runs on Linux. It's "cross-platform". Of course, if they actually try to do that in a serious way, they will discover that Mono is inferior to "real" .Net. And, no offense to Icaza, but by nature of their position, Mono will always be #2 in some sense as it has to play catch-up with MS.
This is a rather unfair description.
No "srs bsns" enterprise .NET developers care about Mono. But the vast, vast majority of their stuff would, if necessary, run on Linux via Mono without much trouble--because most people just don't use the complex stuff that Mono doesn't support.
I use Mono for my current project (a cross-platform game library) because it, unlike everything else aside from C/C++, is capable of effectively targeting OS X, Linux, Android, and iOS. .NET gives me Windows, Xbox 360, and WP7.
As a former C# developer who did try to run some stuff on Mono, I don't think it's an unfair description at all. First, some personal anecdotes:
- Wrote a brief (4 hours perhaps) Windows Forms app that did some math. Ran it on Mono. To Mono's credit, it did run. But to my horror, it actually computed incorrect results.
- I used a popular UI widget library for .Net. Turns out though most of it was written in C#, it had a number of Windows-only DLL imports, and could not run on Mono.
- At the time, ASP.net support was barely functional, if it existed at all. To be fair, I'm not sure if this is still the case or not.
Further, I will offer this additional argument. It is widely known that Java's promise of "write once, run anywhere" is a joke. Not that cross-platform Java can't be done (in fact it can), but it does take deliberate effort to ensure cross-platform support. And this is Java, which has official support for Linux (i.e., the JVM code on Linux is basically the same JVM code on Windows).
Contrast the Java situation with MS .Net, which does not have official support for Linux, but does have the option of Mono on Linux. MS .Net and Mono are two totally separate environments built out of separate code-bases. In this situation you are almost guaranteed to run into major migration headaches, if not outright barriers.
Now perhaps you are running from Mono from the start; well of course that is going to work. My original point isn't that Mono doesn't work when running code actually targeted to it; that may well be the case. My point is that Mono gives traditional .Net developers the false belief that they can run their Windows-targeted .Net code on Linux easily. For most, or at least many, that is simply not the case.
> Not that cross-platform Java can't be done (in fact it can), but it does take deliberate effort to ensure cross-platform support
To be fair, at least for desktop apps, we are down to three platforms now. If it runs on Linux, Mac and Windows, you are about 100% covered. The days of having dozens of vendor-specific Java runtimes around are pretty much over. And as much as I like my IBM RS/6000 workstation, I wouldn't try to run Eclipse on it.
wes-exp is 100% correct. It took several months of effort to get our srs bsns app working with mono. Everything worked just like it did on Windows, except for all the things that didn't. Death by a thousand paper cuts.
> If I were in Microsoft's shoes I would be inclined to think Mono is actually beneficial to MS.
It is. It creates a lot of potential targets for the mother of all patent lawsuits (IIRC, the community promise only covers the ECMA standard). Don't forget that, when Microsoft exits a market, it still owns a lot of patents in that space and can thus act like an NPE.
> they will discover that Mono is inferior to "real" .Net.
OTOH, it runs on far superior OSs ;-)
FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD. Come now, has MS acted against Mono in any way, ever? They've helped them at every step, directly. I know you like to troll MS-related threads, but really man.
Why would they? Is Mono a serious threat? No.
Would it be if it succeeded grabbing market share from Windows? Definitely.
I fail to see your reasoning equaling "something didn't happen" with "something can't ever happen and you are a lunatic for believing it can".
And I know I get downvoted every time I point this out. Reminding people Microsoft never plays nice only makes me unpopular, but it doesn't make me wrong.
Many conspiracies don't make a lot of sense. :-)