Fwd: Fwd: [ale] Miguel de Icaza and Mono?

[Geoffrey]

Jonathan Rickman wrote:
> 
>>It doesn't, but I'd trust Sun a whole lot more then 
>>Microsoft.  Not that I trust Sun, but let's look at history 
>>shall we?  
> 
> 
> I wouldn't trust Sun AT ALL! They are on a sinking ship. Java is the only
> thing they have that floats. Rather than just put the women and children on
> it, they will all pile on and sink it too.

I have little trust for Sun as well, but they certainly haven't pulled 
the kind of stunts M$ has.  Would they if they had the same impact on 
the market, very likely.  I place Sun just a few levels above SCO, both 
pretty much in the same situation, the main difference being SCO is 
betting the bank on nothing, whereas Sun is betting the bank on the only 
real thing they have, Java.

>>Microsoft is well known for 'embrace and extend,' 
>>which is similar to what we are talking about.  The only 
>>difference is, they have a technology that's being 
>>implemented in open source.  All they have to do is tweek 
>>.NET a bit and it will break mono apps.
> 
> 
> How so? A change to the .NET specification will not magically render code
> written prior to it's publication unusable. Nor will a change to the .NET
> framework cause Mono to suddenly stop working with that code. I know of at
> least one company that is still pushing a FoxPro (not MS FoxPro, the
> ORIGINAL FoxPro) application from a Novell 3 server. I know of another that
> is still running NT 3.51 in production. The mere existence of Windows Server
> 2003 did not render it unbootable. One of the first linux based firewalls I
> ever built is still humming away in the office of a concrete plant, running
> a 2.0 series kernel. It will be replaced soon, but not because the release
> of the 2.6 kernel caused it to stop working. They want to run URL filtering
> now.

You are comparing M$ products to M$ products, all of which M$ has a 
vested interest in maintaining some semblence of compatibility.  In this 
thread we're discussing the fact that Mono is based on .NET, a 
proprietary technology of M$.  We're talking cross platform development. 
  So you develop something with Mono that is going to run on Windows and 
then M$ suddenly changes a dependent library on the windows end.  You're 
pretty much screwed until you figure out the change.

> Jack and Tom each have $1000. They both put their money in different banks.
> Jack's bank is totally trnsparent to him. His money just sits and collects
> interest. Tom's bank decides to charge monthly service fees. Tom frowns and
> pays the fees. Tom's bank then decides to convert all their money to Euros.
> Tom takes his money to Jack's bank.

I'm not sure how that applies, one bank's way of doing business is not 
based on how the other does.

Say I have a client who has a .NET application which customers access 
via a Mono implementation.  So M$ modifies how .NET does it's thing, how 
does that get propagated down to the client's .NET application?  Via M$. 
  How does it find it's way to the Mono implementation?  The developer 
must now figure out the changes, which are not published and fix his 
solution.  Sure this happens all the time with things like Samba.  The 
difference is both .NET and Mono are development environments, which 
opens up the possibility of a huge number of varied Mono applications, 
which in theory should/could work with an existing .NET application.

> --
> Jonathan "wishes IBM would buy Sun so we could all just move on" Rickman

So do I.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey       Registered Linux User #108567
                             AT&T Certified UNIX System Programmer - 1995