Mono is here to stay
There’s an ongoing discussion about the Mono project. Mono is somewhat controversial because it is an open source implementation of C# programming language and .NET platform. Mono has constantly being bullied because both C# and .NET are creations of the cause of all evil on earth, Microsoft corp.
The main problem with Mono is that Microsoft may one day to decide to sue it for patent violations. Microsoft, on several occasions, proclaimed that they are not going to sue Mono for whatever reason. Furthermore, there has been some sort of cooperation between Microsoft and Mono project. So in theory it shouldn’t be a problem, but, as expected, this doesn’t impress the fundamentalists.
Update: It appears that Microsoft did not proclaim that they are not going to sue Mono. There is an agreement between Microsoft and Novell that binds Microsoft not to sue Novell’s clients, but this is not the same.
Update2: There has been a development. It seems that Microsoft are going to cover C# and CLI in their Community Promise document. See the details here.
Personally, I like Mono project. C# is an elegant programming language and Mono is a worthy alternative to Java. Now Java is one technology that, IMHO, should be gone long time ago. It freaks me out actually, because it is so slow. It has always been slow and it will always be slow. Yet somehow it manages to reinvent itself, slowing down various aspects of my life, one at a time – its recent reinvention is in cell. phones, as you know.
Despite all that, there has been a couple of guys who raised a subject of whether we need Mono or whether it should be removed from Ubuntu. I can only guess how did all those who worked with/on Mono feel when they saw this crap. Anyway, a couple of days ago the bright side of the force gained a little victory when Ubuntu Technical Board announced that they are not going to bash Mono just because someone may sue it over some patent. Here’s the link.
[…] arguments get weaker and weaker; take for example the comprehensive analysis offered up by Alex on Mono is here to stay: Microsoft, on several occasions, proclaimed that they are not going to sue Mono for whatever […]
Hmmm. My thoughts on my blog.
Summary:
Microsoft has *not* promised not to sue mono, and “some sort of cooperation” is a little bit on the vague side.
The Italians and Irish are here to stay as well.
Its funny how a culture reacts to an infusion of new ideas. I remember way,way back to the early 90s, how much usenet users despised AOL, because it flooded the internet with “idiots”, when the internet was clearly only intended for the guru elite.
@Jason
When I mentioned fundamentalists, it seems that I meant exactly you.
I intentionally didn’t specify what kind of cooperation took place between Mono and Microsoft, simply because I didn’t want to get into details. I don’t know all the details and frankly this wasn’t the point of the post. So in some way you are right. Yet you managed to pull a 500 word long flame post out of thin air, accusing me of spreading FUD? Am I spreading fear, doubt and uncertainty? Are you kidding me?
Considering the name of your blog I don’t even want to get into explaining why Mono is good and important. Just burn in the fire of truth and by all means stay away from me.
Oh and please don’t bother to respond. Instead, why don’t you just allow comments on your own blog, so that those inflamed by your understanding of truth will have a fair chance to respond.
@turtlewax
This has always been this way and probably always will be
Yet there’s something else in here. It’s the FLOSS world against Microsoft thing. If you take and use all the energy they put into Microsoft hatred you could replace a medium size power plant.
> Microsoft, on several occasions, proclaimed
> that they are not going to sue Mono for
> whatever reason.
Could you provide an example of one of these occasions? What was said? By whom?
@saulgoode
No. I can’t. This is a mistake I made. Sorry. I muddled up with a deal between Novell and MS, here (see Mono and Microsoft’s patents): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(software)
I’ll fix the post.
@Alexander,
Actually, just hours before I made my post, Microsoft appears to have finally provided just such a promise not to sue of the ECMA technologies.
http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/07/06/the-ecma-c-and-cli-standards.aspx
@saulgoode
Thanks the posting this. I already managed to cover this here:
http://www.alexonlinux.com/mono-is-here-to-stay-period
>>If you take and use all the energy
>>they put into Microsoft hatred
If we could represent evil as a vector defined by direction and magnitude, we’d find that each of us, on any given day, have committed selfish acts comparable to Microsoft (in direction). But the magnitude for a large corporation will be much greater. This statement will of course be ill-received. No one wants to be compared to Microsoft.
We wear shoes manufactured in a sweatshop. Most of the products we use are affordable because they were manufactured in countries with minimal environmental and labor regulation.
Yeah, I know all these issues are completely unrelated to the “real issue” of how evil Microsoft is. And that’s really convenient because it let’s us all continue our smug sanctimonious FOSS existence, riding piggy-back on a commercially funded global network, ranting away on a blog site sponsored by google ads.
Here’s some fodder….
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1988/12/mm1288_07.html
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1990/12/mokhiber.html
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1995/01/mm0195.html#nigeria
@turtlewax
I thought about what you’ve written and it seems that my opinion on the subject is, at least partially, originates from what you’ve described and referring to. Thanks for sharing the idea.