Ok. But how about....
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| hchaudh1 Dec 11, 2006 6:30 AM EDT |
"It offers advanced, modern features, including Just-in-Time compilation, the “sandbox...." So does Java, only more mature, MS free, vast libraries, not having to play catchup to every new release of the .Net platform. My problem with that article is that the author seems to be of the view that it is bad that Sun Open Sourced Java, that the OS'ing of Java is somehow taking away from Linux's next big hope, Mono. There is a lot of hand wringing but no one wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room i.e. Mono is not cross platform, its still a port of a propreitery technology (and we know how well ports work in the long run). I don't want to start a Java vs. .Net debate here but someone please tell me why is it so essential for the well being of Linux to have Mono succeed. If you convince me, I just might go out and buy that XBox 360 that I have been wanting to get but just couldn't bring myself to give money to our recently-turned-benevolent overlords. |
| tuxchick Dec 11, 2006 8:24 AM EDT |
Just speculating here- Mono could be important in the same way that ReactOS and FOSS apps that run on Windows are important- as direct Windows and other key Microsoft thingies replacements. Every other consumer product has a bigtime brand name and a herd of knockoffs, like Cheerios and all the other O cereals, Pepsi/Coke and the lesser brown fizzy waters, pens and papers, power tools, clothing, you name it. Anything that is a direct replacement for Redmondware has the potential to win sizable market share, and provide some genuine competition and choice. |
| hchaudh1 Dec 11, 2006 9:25 AM EDT |
Thats true, provided the satisfaction of a few big assumptions here. First that Mono is a replacement for .Net. As of now, it is not. It does not do many things that the .Net runtime does, the least of which being access to the DirectX API, driver support etc. Secondly, the most successful OSS projects are the ones which provide a robust, useful software to end users. Firefox, Apache et. al. No software has ever succeeded on the "its OSS/anything but MS" ticket. Even being good enough is not enough, case in point, Open Office. If a company wants .Net functionality, it will pay for .Net. Of course, given time, Mono could become a viable contender in the enterprise area, but similarly, .Net would have developed newer and better technologies by then. After a point, Mono would just be playing catch-up to .Net, unless MS blesses it in some way, something that I highly doubt. Sooner or later, Mono would have to have a huge fork from the CLR and stand on its own as an application framework, at which point, it will only be competing against other OSS projects and not MS technology. Sure competition is a good thing when it leads to the development of something better but when its competition for a me too place, it is just self defeating. |
| dinotrac Dec 11, 2006 10:05 AM EDT |
tc - Mono has come a LONG way and has substantial functionality. I've only known one consultant who has used it in an enterprise setting, but it was an interesting case. He used it because mono had strong serial I/O support (hey!! we are talking unix here) that was lacking in Micrsofoft's .Net. never queried him as to whether that was a function of mono itself or that mono ran on a platform that provided that functionality. Makes no never mind...the guy was able to do a solid high-performance application that used his skillset well. |
| jezuch Dec 11, 2006 3:20 PM EDT |
I don't like Mono and .NOT simply because I don't like MS's style of API design. It's mostly plain adhockery. It just "feels" bad. There are lots of bad APIs in Java too, especially older ones, but at least there are lots of people designing them from outside of Sun, and doing it well :) |
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