Home > Mono > Mono 1.1.6 Released Mono 1.1.6 Released Submitted by Jon Davidson 2005-04-01 Mono 35 Comments Mono 1.1.6 was released, release notes here. About The Author Eugenia Loli Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker. Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli 35 Comments 2005-04-01 9:50 pm … that they will have installers that will work on Xandros or Linspire this time? 2005-04-01 10:03 pm Why don’t you ask to Xandros or Linspire? They are company and they should listen to the customers if they get a lot of requests. 2005-04-01 10:41 pm a new accelation engine called stereo was announced today. It will split the bytes in the bytecode and run them on two processors in parallel. The energy for this is gained through nuclear fission. 2005-04-01 11:55 pm It’s beta…. the other version works better. 2005-04-02 12:08 am Well its’ not that easy to build: as the URL indicates. Kubuntu5.04 apt-get : bison gcc-3.4 g++-3.4 pkg-install libglib-dev . ./configure. make error /jay/jay -ctv < ../jay/skeleton.cs cs-parser.jay > jay-tmp.out && mv jay-tmp.out cs-parser.cs /bin/sh: ../jay/jay: No such file or directory ake: Entering directory `/home/matthew/mono-1.1.6/mcs/jay’ cc -DSKEL_DIRECTORY=””/usr/local/share/jay”” -g -O2 -c -o closure.o closure.c make: Leaving directory `/home/matthew/mono-1.1.6′ make: *** [all] Error 2 Wasn’t the original .net base on the idea of distributed computing. You don’t own the software you lease it? The networked nightmare. 2005-04-02 3:07 am Can someone point me to a working debian repository with the new mono packages? The ones on debian’s ftp are old as hell and the ‘official’ site for these (http://pkg-mono.alioth.debian.org/) has squat. thanks in advance 2005-04-02 7:25 am I look forward to the Windows installer being updated past 1.1.4, especially since the 1.1.5 changes seemed like they would have some effect on that platform. Before you ask, I use it for cross-platform testing. 2005-04-02 8:26 am Did you try the “Linux Installer for x86 (All distributions)”. At least on SuSE it works really nice and if we believe its name it should work for Linsprire, Debian and so on. 2005-04-02 4:42 pm It is interesting how Mono is making a lot of headlines lately. Novell is making most of its new client applications using Mono and Gnome. I know that some people don’t like Mono since it runs .Net applications created by Microsoft. Lately I have been thinking that Mono will eventually surpass Java on Linux since Java is not a GPL license and many distributions are reluctant to include it. If you think about it it is ironic that a Microsoft created technology in the end might be the most popular application development framework for the open source community. Philisophically it ruffles many peoples feathers, but Mono could be an excellent technology for Linux since it will make the transition from Windows to Linux much easier. Kind of makes you wonder what will happen to Java in a couple of years? 2005-04-02 5:29 pm Mono seems to be a nice exit strategy for MS. Once fully matured, I expect a nice, binary C# version of MS Office to roll out. Redmond has got to know that, within a couple of years (?) they’re going to lose significant market share to FOSS, and, if you’re playing the long game, this is exactly what you do. 2005-04-02 6:32 pm me, on the other hand, once fully matured, expect a nice lawsuit from MS against every major application developed with mono… they have billion$ to spare terrorizing potencial customers of FOSS technology, even if they have no hope to win the legal actions, and the dotnet framework seems the perfect bait. ( http://librenix.com/?inode=3501 ) 2005-04-02 7:31 pm I dont think MS would go legal on this If you take it from their own software developers perspective, they would be(are): 1) Verry proud of what they did and what impact it causes. 2) Mono Helps promote their verry good quallity software(.net is really increadible, it is a verry easy and also abstract platform, not like java – too abstract) 3) Their own thoughts on how they do programming are mirrored somehow or find a paralel(look how these guys did it ) in mono. 4) Bill Gates is too rich to do this. 5) I bet Bill is not affraid of Linux. 6) Even if the discontinue mono somehow, there would be people that would still take the technology further(even in the underground) period. 2005-04-02 8:12 pm >once fully matured, expect a nice lawsuit from MS against every major application developed with mono… i don’t think so. Mono is the best for MS what could happened. MS wan’t that their technologie wins again java. But therefore they need to be platform independent and have a large base and exact that happens with Mono. Before they will lowsuit mono they will lawsuit java, because that’s there “enemy”. 2005-04-02 9:53 pm MS doesn’t want platform independence. Maybe they say so sometimes in a talk or before court when it makes them look better, but in truth they want everyone to run their stuff on Windows. Of course! (You know Bill Gates has this vision he wrote about in his Book 2005-04-02 9:54 pm > Before they will lowsuit mono they will lawsuit java, because that’s there “enemy”. Well, Microsoft already fought against Sun before court. So who’s next? 😉 2005-04-03 12:45 am Microsoft is very clever: – Create a powerful platform – Call it “.net” (everybody is familiar with the expressions “net” and “network”, who knows what “java” means?) – Patent it – Standardize some tiny parts of it – Wait for some other “clever” people cloning it under the gpl, even the non-standardized and patented parts (yes, this is what the mono project does) – Wait for some even more “clever” anti-nongpl-anti-java-fundamentalists pushing the clone because java is not gpl – Wait for some very “clever” people using it – Wait until the especially “clever” people depend on it – Begin suing them for patent infringement and make a lot of money – Enjoy and exploit the monopoly This is clever. And especially clever are those gpl-fundamentalists that prefer using this unlicensed implementation of patented technology. Yes, this is what it is: mono is an unlicensed implementation of patented technology, and will be the end of the gnome desktop and the beginning of yet another microsoft monopoly. PS: Yes, java is non-free. mono is gpl, but is it free software? No, because unlicensed and illegal stuff is per se non-free, even if it is gpl, because the term “free software” only applies to legal stuff. PPS: mono’s performance is very, very poor compared to both java and the original .net, period. It is a very good decision that RedHat does not distribute it (since RedHat distributes free software only, which mono is definitely not). 2005-04-03 3:16 am – Begin suing them for patent infringement and make a lot of money – Enjoy and exploit the monopoly I don’t really believe these statements are true. C# was standardized internationally and it is perfectly legal to write code in C# without MS getting a single cent. The parts which are proprietary are the compilers and dot net runtime engine. Mono was created without any view of MS source code and only supports published API’s which MS documented. MS couldn’t come after a developer using Mono legally. I don’t really see any real legal ground for them to win. They would have to prove that the Mono compilers and runtime used MS code illegally. Developing an implementation based on a standardized API is not against the law. Please stop circulating FUD! 2005-04-03 3:20 am “Mono was created without any view of MS source code” NOT TRUE! Mainsoft,a contributor to the Mono project has had access to MS sourcecode. Don’t you remember the Windows sourcecode leak last year? http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1526831,00.asp One example: http://www.mono-project.com/news/ April 02 2004 “Mainsoft has contributed an implementation of their Basic runtime to the project.” …theres more. Mainsoft is tainted. “only supports published API’s which MS documented.” Windows.Form, ASP.NET, etc are patent encumbered and are implemented without MS’s permission. Simple as that. “Developing an implementation based on a standardized API is not against the law.” There is a lot more to Mono than just C#/CLR. Only a VERY small portion of Mono is covered by the ECMA standards. This is the problem! The majority of the Mono implementation is not standardized. Even the RAND agreement is flaky. Come on, some guy posting in a mailinglist is legally binding? My ass. Why does Miguel just sidestep the whole legal status of Mono every time there is an interview? Seth N is right, Mono is a death trap. Beware of MS or they will crush you just like they have done to all their competitors….and allies. http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/mono 2005-04-03 5:01 am Seth N is right, Mono is a death trap. Beware of MS or they will crush you just like they have done to all their competitors….and allies. Wow, for a second there I thought you were quoting a line from the Lord of the Rings movie will all the death traps and beware of the evil ork stuff (he, he, he 😉 I just read the blog article by Seth. He makes some good points but as he said he is not a lawyer. Possibly it is true that Mono is not risk free but if desktop linux got to a point where it was serious competition for MS I don’t think any legal action against Mono would go unnoticed by the Justice Dept. You can’t have a monopoly demanding licenses from a stadardized language which prevents competitors from using it. It just wouldn’t fly since it would be easy to challenge as anti-competitive behavior triggering more Justice Dept. intervention. 2005-04-03 5:27 am “demanding licenses from a stadardized language which prevents competitors from using it.” EXACTLY! The language(C#) is safe but the vast majority of the framework is open for MS target pratice. They have full rights to prosecute and eradicate Mono even with the DOJ watching them. Nothing wrong here, perfectly legal. Also notice that the DOJ closed the antitrust case in 2004. MS was convicted but was never punished federally. They had a “slap on the wrist” in Cali. USA = MS bitch 2005-04-03 7:00 am …at what was standardized by ISO and ECMA http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/ecma/default.asp After you look at that you should check out how many non-ms libraries have been created for mono (or .net in general) that ms can’t [easily] complain about. If mono lost xsp/webforms, winforms it might suck – but it wouldn’t be the end of mono. Mono is cool in it’s own right – and some people should recognize this. 2005-04-03 7:20 am Well, lets do some research before the panic “ensues” us all. The C#, the CLI, run-time environment all have been submitted to the ECMA/ISO standards, they require that all standards which are patented the company must grant licences on a reasonable, non-discriminatory basis. http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/codeofconduct.htm Now, Mono is mostly safe, except for the ADO and Windows.Forms stack, which would be likely to be patented, in which case the whole idea of mono compatability will be useless then. We should develop using standard stacks and look to substitute stacks for ADO (shameless plug) like ODK, and Gtk# as substitute for windows.forms. Anyways, what does “reasonable, non-discriminatory basis” means beats me ; soo probably, we aren’t as safe as we think. 2005-04-03 8:49 am I recently watched the video stream of the Friday session of Brainshare in which Miguel de Icaza did a short presentation of mono. The first thing that Miguel did was to write a tiny little ‘hello world’ application using Microsofts Visual c# (?) IDE. He then then compiled the tiny app in mono and executed that same executable file on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Then he took a c# demonstration program, written by Microsoft, which was significantly more complex and involved, compiled it under mono and ran the same excutable again under Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. I believe a few people at brainshare actually grokked what had just happened, there was a slight cheer which audibly spread through the crowd of attendees. The scene was actually rather surreal. Miguel founded the GNOME project-arguably one of the largest Free Software projects in existence. And there we see Miguel using the Micorsoft IDE to write a small program. It was almost as if an unwritten taboo had just been violated. The nonchalant way in which he did this was utterly bemusing. But what he had done was actually far more impressive, for aside for taboo-breaking he actually demonstrated something which the computing world has long held as a kind of holy grail of programming-being able to run the same executable, unmodified, on each of the major platforms, and the application itself being native on each of these platforms. The cynicism which blinds people from seeing how astounding, how outright amazing this is, is so difficult to cut through. So many people are so jaded they will probably never be able to even appreciate this. The write-once-run-anyhwhere holy grail of programming has with mono come one step closer to reality. This has always been the main point of Java- except that Java is nowhere native-Java applications always remain Java applications. Now of course mono is still in it’s infancy-but it is already the basis for a large and growing number of applications. In fact most mono applications are simply GNOME applications. I will go out on a limb and make a well founded prophecy: there is no way that Microsoft is going to attack mono via patents. Ok. Now why do I feel moved to make such a statement which is impossible to verify ? Because there is no end to the .Net programmers working at Microsoft who are touched and moved by what Miguel has done. Miguel took their work, C#/CLR, as documented standards against which he developed mono, extending this programming platofrm far beyond the scope and vision which Microsoft itself pursued. I cannot imagine microsoft developers not being extremely impressed seeing the application that they wrote running seemlessly, natively on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. Even those who work at Microsoft are human beings-they are proud of what they have accomplished and they cannot see what Miguel is doing with mono and not be proud. Now of course Microsoft is not going to officially endorse mono-Microsoft doesn’t endorse much of anything that they do not totally own and control. But there is world between not endorsing mono and seeking to destroy the mono project via patents. Microsoft would in effect be attacking their own developers by attacking mono-not because these developers are working on mono, but because of the pride of seeing their hard work utilized in ways which show so much more imagination than they themselves had. It maybe that many of those developers at Microsoft themselves wished that .Net had the mulit-platform capabilities but that this was realizable due to policy decisions at Microsoft. There is no doubt that many of the Microsoft developers identify with what Miguel and the mono project are doing. And although many, many hate Miguel becuase of this, Miguel and his colleagues working on the mono project have obviously identified themselves with many of Microsoft developers, apprecitiating the hardwork that went into creating the C#/CLR framework. But of course mono is NOT .Net-much in the same way that GNU is NOT UNIX. As has already been pointed out most of the development with mono up till now, and probably for the forseeable future will be in the form of GNOME applications. The native Linux stack in mono is totally %100 unique to mono it is not a copy or clone of anything coming from Microsoft. The actual parts of Microsoft .Net which are being cloned, ie. reimplimented in a compatible fashion, is not the majority of mono, but rather just a large part, which exists in order to facillitate the transition of .Net developers to multi-platform development. It is extremely unlikely that really large scale .Net products from Microsoft will ever run under mono- Microsoft will use .Net to expand .Net and so will inevitably use the bleeding-edge developments in .Net which are not part of mono. Mono is trying to provide a degree of compatibility-but compatibility from the p.o.v of capabilities- and the capabilities which the C#/CLR framework provides is why mono exists in the first place, the rest is rather incidental. But in all likelihood there will be a large number of applications written in .Net by third parties/in-house which run on all of the major platforms, natively, unmodified. If this does transpire, and I see know reason why it shouldn’t, Linux will defacto become one of the platforms for developing and running applications-and this is the key point- without these third party/in-house application developers explicitly having to develop for Linux. Miguel and the mono project have provided us Linux users with a set of powerful tools based on a powerful framework and this is aready being realized as seen in apps like Beagle, Muine, F-Spot, Tomboy, iFolder etc. Moreover Miguel and mono team have smoothe over most of the platform differences allowing for .Net developers to radically increase the efficienty of their own work. Linux and Free software world will be able to attract new developers and each of these platforms will profit from these moves. No mono is not the be all-end all of computing technology. But one must be really jaded and cynical to not see what has been accomplished here. Hats off to Miguel and the crew…. Seth has been smokin too much crack lately, he should lay off the pipe 2005-04-03 9:00 am Not quite true, the reason why mono seems to be native, is that it binds into native widgets, you can achieve that with java as well. GTK, Qt, KDE, Gnome, SWT you name it. Also you can compile many java apps already into native code with GCJ, you wont get any performance benefits from that except for startup performance. The way I see it Mono is a step back, you lose portability because Mono is not that heavily tested across platforms lacks certain apis and some can be pulled easily by Microsoft if they decide to. Mono is just constantly in everybodys mouth because it is Iczas baby and he loves to clone stuff from Microsoft. 2005-04-03 9:59 am I am not a Java or mono programmer-so shoot me if I stick my foot in my mouth SWT is NOT Java. I have used SWT/GTK Java apps before (eclipse). But it will be a cold day in hell before Sun embraces SWT. Yes one can use SWT with Java and achieve the same native look and feel-but in as far it is not endorsed by Sun-it is arguable whether or not it *belongs* to Java. Swing has improved dramatically over the years and from its inception it was far more visually appealing that AWT. But Sun has never even had the goal of achieving native look and feel with Java. I know there are a number of Swing themes which mimic native look and feel-but this remains quite superficial. The moment you actualy bind against the native widgets your apps don’t merely ‘appear’ native- they *are* native…. And of course what you said about gcj is true-but gcj is, again, NOT java. Once you compile a Java program with gcj the resulting executable is so totally native that it begs the question to even wish to differentiate…. feel free to correct me if I’m wrong….. Your last comment about Miguel is correct, but I highly doubt that he ‘loves to clone stuff from Microsoft’ *merely* because it is from Microsoft, but because he sees these things from Microsoft as being full of powerful capabilites which he wishes to have at his disposal for himself and FOSS community at large. Bonobo came and went, ie. Miguels attempt to recreate COM for Linux. I still appreciate the ideas behind Bonobo/CORBA it is just that the implementation that was created in GNOME was excruciatingly difficult to debug-which I expect is the reason why GNOME has all but abandoned Bononbo. I recently reread Miguels article, “Lets make UNIX not suck”, from 1997, in which he introduced Bonobo. I found myself in total agreement with the rationale he wrote. As it turns out much of the functionality that once was achieved through COM under Windows is now being realized through the MIME implementation in modern GNOME without Bonobo-but I still go through withdrawal pains-I miss Bonobo. The loss of view functionality in Nautilus, which is direct function of the deprecation of Bonobo, has resulted paradoxically in a much more stable and quicker Nautilus, but which is far, far less usefull for me personally. The Bonobo/CORBA framework provided precisely this kind of viewing componenet technology and remains, for me, the most powerful way of commanding hybrid data objects-ie. the hybrid formed in the conjunction of a file format and ‘view’ of this data. KDE has always had a similiar kind of technology (Kparts) and if it wasn’t for the utter clunkiness of KDE’S user interface I would probably use Konqueror as my primary file browser. They way I see it, the current Nautilus uses the MIME system to simply launch associated applications, which leads to a file format->application usage profile. But I sorely miss being able to ‘browse’ my data, to have an overview of my data *as* data and not merely as a file format which is remarkedly unintuitive. I understand the problems with the buggy implementation of Bobonob and why it has been deprecated, but I really miss being able to preview my documents (OOo, Word, PDF, PS), music files and videos. I am sure at some point down the road some solution will arise to fill this lack which has become so obvious in GNOME 2.10. But again this kind of ‘viewing’ component technology which Windows realized with their COM architecture was actually quite impressive, the capabilities it provided for where extremely useful, even though NeXT had a far superior implmentation of the same ideas than either COM or Bononbo/CORBA…… So you may think it’s all about cloning Microsoft-I think it’s about providing capabilities from which people profit….Of course, however, Miguel does indeed seem to really enjoy playing with this whole Microsoft-taboo thing which is so rampant in the FOSS world-but not because he is pro-Microsoft but rather to lightly jab at those FOSS developers trapped in their own insecurities…. 2005-04-03 11:49 am No SWT is not java, it is an external library you can add to your program, so is the GTK Binding for mono which you dont have natively in Windows .Net. Java itself is the language and core libs, true, but there is much more. I have yet to encounter any serious project which restricts itself to the core libs. Most programs I encountered added at least one or two of the jakarta libs (mostly the jakarta-commons) So do those programs lose portability, no, are they not java, again no. Where is the difference in SWT? SWT is just another extension lib, which adds platform independend native widget binding to the mix. Just because the java libaries are huge does not mean that there are not rooms for improvement and those extension libs do that. You can compare the SWT pretty much to the GTK2 bindings of Mono, but it is more portable, because it runs on every platform SWT has been ported to, and that are a lot of platforms so far. As for the whole Bonobo/COM thing, I can remember that, the KDE people warned him against going the Corba route, they were there, failed and went a different route, they already built upon a 10 year experience the Star Division had with component models and why COM was a lousy solution. (Face it Com is the worst component model there is, the Star Division had a better component model in place in 1990 and NextStep also, same goes for KDE which is from ground up component oriented) They had a fully component oriented desktop (just like NextStep did) in place and they ad a working code which was fast and worked and wanted to give the kparts code to help them out to avoid the same mistakes everybody else had to go through. Instead of that Miguel went the Bonobo route, got into the same problems as everybody else who tried that before and now came to the same conclusion as Microsoft, abandon it and move on. But again he clones another thing from Microsoft instead of putting his obvious genious and talent into something more original or helping other projects out (Parrot for instance) 2005-04-03 12:03 pm I did not want to say component oriented models do not work, KDE OSX and NextStep are the perfect examples. It was simply that Iczaza failed with its component model based on Corba, because he chose to a) try to clone the worst component model there is, which is COM b) tried to but the layer on Corba, which everybody back then knew (especially the KDE people who failed also with their first incarnation of Kparts which was based on Corba) was simply to complex and to slow to be used for those kinde of things. As you said, abandoning the component model entirely is the worst decision they could have ever made. Components are necessery, so is a decent usable compound document model. They instead should have made the same decision as most other successful component model designers. Simply try to locate the source of the problems and replace it, but stick to the idea. If you compare how easy it is to write a decent application in Cocoa and KDE and compare that to Gnome you can see that not giving the developers a myriad of good components is a bad idea. Izcaza now follows the Microsoft route of trying to get out of the mess by adding a smalltalkish system to the mix. This adds more ease to application development I agree. But you also need more horsepower and lots of ram (which is also true for Windows, Microsoft is betting here seriously on the stupidity of the average user that they buy a new pc once things become slower again, Microsoft is the only company which can get away with that). And besides that there is the factor of Microsoft which could hurt Gnome in the long run severely once, most desktop apps are pushed into mono or have severe mono bindings and the developers start to use ADO.Net and whatever is cloned from the windows side of things outside of the ECMA standard. Lets say following 10 years from now Gnome will be a mix of mono and native C/C++ stuff, now Microsoft sees the first serious impact in desktop business due to Linux and they start to go onto a serious crusade. The first target probably will be Mono, or they simply buy Novell first and then target mono, to get rid of novell first. What would happen at that stage probably would be that the entire gnome desktop could be within one strike of a lawsuite rendered semi unusable like most DVD players in windows in standard desktop installs already are. Iczaza is playing a dangerous game here just for the sake of doing something cool, which would be even cooler if he would stay out of Microsoft territory finally and give existing projects his genious, which he obviously has. 2005-04-03 12:47 pm Even those who work at Microsoft are human beings-they are proud of what they have accomplished and they cannot see what Miguel is doing with mono and not be proud. Now of course Microsoft is not going to officially endorse mono-Microsoft doesn’t endorse much of anything that they do not totally own and control. But there is world between not endorsing mono and seeking to destroy the mono project via patents. Microsoft would in effect be attacking their own developers by attacking mono-not because these developers are working on mono, but because of the pride of seeing their hard work utilized in ways which show so much more imagination than they themselves had. The decision will not be made by developers. Neither in house nor external. If Microsoft faces remarkable competition by mono, they will sue, no matter if they loose a (very minor) share of developers or not. They have the highest market share and even if it may be a bit lower in the future, they’ll still have the best cards in this game. If Microsoft can impair a competitor this way, they will. Undermine OSS, have a long breath, sue, spread FUD as usual. I wouldn’t call it a new strategy, but an enhanced one. 2005-04-03 2:48 pm me, on the other hand, once fully matured, expect a nice lawsuit from MS against every major application developed with mono… they have billion$ to spare terrorizing potencial customers of FOSS technology, even if they have no hope to win the legal actions, and the dotnet framework seems the perfect bait. I don’t think it will happen. MS does not have a history suing people, in turn they get sued constantly which would explain their massive work towards obtaining patents on technology. They need those patents to fight lawsuits against them. There is no history of MS suing to assuming they will sue users of Mono is so far unfounded. 2005-04-03 5:34 pm Hello, Mainsoft is a contributor to the Mono class libraries. Before their new product Visual J2EE (which is a .NET and Java merging technology) they were the licensors of Windows and provided a Windows to Unix migration toolkit. Someone leaked this licensed source code from Mainsoft into the public (the event you describe) but this bears no relationship to Mono. Mainsoft is not a .NET source code licensor: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/post-hoc.html As for Seth’s statements, they were largely debunked by others and myself at the time they were posted. Miguel. 2005-04-03 6:00 pm “Developers, developers, developers”… remember the “monkeyboy”-Ballmer, shouting on stage ? ( http://www.ntk.net/ballmer/mirrors.html ) that’s the greatest ( if any other ) edge FOSS has, and those developers working with mono ( tainted ) technology might threat this. being part of the “paranoid-wing”, let me have my delirious a bit further: an agressive series of legal action against clients/developers/companies which depend ( on their daily-money-making business ) on mono would be extremelly effective, shifting all those developers working with “illegal dotnet AKA mono” towards the “legal” dotnet, after all, it’s “compatible”, the skills will be already in place, darn, even the code will be already written. It would be cheaper just trash all those linux machines ( format c: ) and replace with MS technology/licenses, than rewriting the core applications and/or reeducate the developing teams, or facing downtime on production enviroments. It’s like a reversi game ( http://www.freearcade.com/Reversi.jav/Reversi.html ), after a long struggle, just one misplaced piece, and all those other pieces you had are turned to “the enemy”. dotnet/mono smells like, looks like, tastes like a trap… it ought to be a trap. if history serves us for anything, it is to state that MS does not play neither “fair” nor gentle… 2005-04-03 7:43 pm Hey, I just noticed that even Miguel chimed in here talking about the source code that was leaked out and how it has no relationship to Mono. There definately appear to be two different camps here: the Mono is cool let’s use it group; and the Mono is an evil MS ploy paranoid group. In reality I think the paranoid group makes some good points. Microsoft has a horrible track record in regard to following the rules in business ethics. So there is some truth there. But then there’s the truth that Mono is very cool technology and if you have ever done any programming using Dot Net from MS you would be amazed at how easy it is to write applications. I would even go as far as saying that some parts of the framework are brilliant design decisions. I remember when I was working on a web application in Java and I was taking a class in C# and I was trying to find equivalent Java technology that the Dot Net framework offered for web applications and it just wasn’t available on the Java side. I remember it sent a shiver up my spine a little since I knew the truth but was afraid to admit it — at the risk of being flamed I will say it: Dot Net kicks Java’s ass in a serious way! The only thing I hated about Dot Net was the reliance on MS server software to run it all. But, with Mono the one issue I had with Dot Net is gone. It seems that everyone would like to use Mono but have some sort of legal document in there hand stating that they can never be sued for using Mono nor can Microsoft demand money for licenses to use Mono since it uses patented technology. I guess what we need is some sort of indemnification contract from Microsoft that is legal and binding. If Novell had such a document in their hands would this end the paranoi camps complaints? So Miguel, what say you get on the horn with MS’s lawyers and ask to receive some sort of legal indemnification contract for Novell for developers and companies to use Mono. If nothing else happens it would at least be intersting to see what MS’s legal dept. comes up with as a response. 2005-04-04 6:50 am “So Miguel, what say you get on the horn with MS’s lawyers and ask to receive some sort of legal indemnification contract for Novell for developers and companies to use Mono.” How about asking Microsoft to do the same thing with all the software that they deploy. I’m sure you’ll get a similar response. Or [almost] any other software company. 2005-04-04 9:39 am See this image: http://www.newsforge.com/blob.pl?id=fd569fd7c9a60d7619f7bd243b37bf4… A standard / normal distribution. The bottom 11% of people appear to be all posting here. Shame there is such a limited perception of a great technology. 2005-04-04 9:07 pm The bottom 11% of people appear to be all posting here. Shame there is such a limited perception of a great technology. Yah, yah, yah, I have heard the bell curve theory on posting too. Basically the laudest and most vocal posters are only the fringe population so why bother listening to them. If you look carefully though you will see a lot of people are not poo-pooing Mono but would like to use it but are just legally scared to use it. I personally would like to use with Linux and GTK#. I like it much more than Java. There is a realistic point to their fears. Patent harassament is a big thing now. Look at SCO going after Linux. Most open source companies wouldn’t have the resources to launch a legal defense if MS decided to come after them. Uncertainty creates fear. In the end if you have open options like Ruby, Perl, or Python then it is safer to go with those options.