MS .net vs Mono, Open Source 243
vinsci writes "Sometimes, reader comments to reporter-written stories are just as good as the stories themselves. Such as David Mohring's comment yesterday on ZDNet.com's story Mono & .Net: The odd couple. Since Microsoft are now using their licensing terms to stop GPL and LGPL free software, it would be a welcome sign of free software maturity at Microsoft if they actually resolved the Mono issue. The gist of his comment: 'Microsoft's CEOs have made it 'patently' clear that they intend to restrict competing .Net implementations by cultivating Microsoft's patents, [...]
Mono also implements parts of .NET that have NOT been submitted to ECMA and ISO standards. Those parts of Mono lack even the protection for IP infringement with re-implementation that ISO documentation licensing implies. [...] There [are] those that claim that .NET is open to re-implementation, but until Microsoft make a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA, any .NET re-implementation represents a pending legal mindfield.'
While on the subject of C# development, users of the GPL'd C# development environment SharpDevelop may also want to try Eclipse together with the Open Source Improve CSharp plugin for Eclipse. Eclipse also support C/C++ these days using GCC and GDB, thanks to the CDT. There are about two hundred add-on plugins available for Eclipse. Eclipse itself is available for many platforms, including Linux with native GTK 2 support."
The Devil (Score:3, Informative)
If you plan to sup with the devil, it is best to bring a long spoon
Re:The Devil (Score:3, Insightful)
If copyright owners could determine the law, they wouldn't need to spend millions lobbying in Washington. The fact that they're lobbying like crazy illustrates the fact that users are bound by the law, not by the wishes of copyright holders.
Having said that, in this case software patents are a real threat to innovation by US programmers. This abuse of patents hurts the US public and is against the constitutional idea behind patents (the promotion of progress and innovation).
However, the open source community can't change patent law, so the only way to win this game is to follow the rules by the letter but creating the opposite result from what other players are doing. Maybe through something like a GPL for patents ?
Re:The Devil (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft has a number of patents on the technologies in
in this case software patents are a real threat to innovation by US programmers
I don't see how copying
Re:The Devil (Score:3, Insightful)
You apparently forgot that new technology is based on and interacts with existing technology. If someone patented the recording and playback of a signal that can be displayed as a visual image before the VCR was invented, is the VCR really innovative?
If you don't think so then you need to check your premises.
Bad IP laws prevent you from building on other people's work and that inhibits innovation.
Regards, Ross
Re:The Devil (Score:2)
Obviously you don't have any practical experience in this area.
If you build something innovative and patentable as an extension to somebody else's work, you own the rights to that innovation. What you still don't get is the right to commercialize that innovation if it infringes on the base technology. In the real world of IP, there are any number of practical solutions to this issue including various types of mutually beneficial cross licensing.
Bad IP laws prevent you from building on other people's work and that inhibits innovation.
Current IP laws do NOT prevent you from doing this.
That might be dangerous (Score:2)
There are those of us that have one major issue with the GPL -- the amount of trust one is forced to put in the FSF. The FSF now has enormous intellectual property power by having the ability to revise the license on a very large amount of software.
Now, maybe the FSF is "okay" for a couple years. Or maybe Stallman decides to give special favors to companies that donate large amounts of money to the FSF (the idea has already been batted around). Fifty years from now, unless the GPL flops, it will be enormously influential and powerful. Stallman will likely be dead, and a new generation or two will have passed through the organization. Do you trust the FSF to have that much power a few years down the road? Especially when it becomes *worth* it to bribe an FSF member with a few million dollars?
The FSF is the single point of failure of the GPL. Sure, you can do what Linus does and use "GPL v2 only", but very, very few people do so.
Anyway, patents would be even more nasty. If a viral-style license was produced, where you could use any FSF-owned patents as long as you also donate any other patents used on a project to the FSF, you have an *incredibly* quickly growing virus. It's *very* hard to avoid infrining a huge body of patents (unlike copyright, where you just avoid copying any GPLed code).
I had no idea you read Slashdot, Rik.
Re:The Devil (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually there's a good discussion of this here [business2.com].
It seems that Microsoft is quite encouraging of the Mono effort:
"Hats off to Icaza for getting as far as he has," says John Montgomery, who oversees theHowever the motives for this seem unclear... probably with all the bad press that MS has recieved lately they are frightened of appearing ani-competitive.
I guess that the big risk for Mono is that it exists in the legal grey area between the ECMA C# and the proprietary .NET. In this twilight area they are very much in Microsoft's shadow and at their legal whim.
agreed (Score:4, Interesting)
They're happy to see Mono progress. In the end, it'll help them sell more copies of Visual Studio and Windows XP Professional.
But what I'm afraid of is that if someday Microsoft is in bad shape and its profits start to drop, they'll go on a legal rampage and take down anyone that built software even remotely "like" theirs.
FUD? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:FUD? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes true, but there's no evidence that they won't either. In business you don't start projects with "well, maybe they won't sue us...".
With any .NET implementation, Microsoft holds the patent card, heck they hold the copyright card as well; a whole lot of them.
Any .NET implemenation that is not officially sanctioned by Microsoft in a legally binding way is making a very risky bet.
I say, Either Miguel knows something we don't, or he is being a bit callous with Ximian VC money in this case.
Re:FUD? (Score:2)
Yes true, but there's no evidence that they won't either.
What about these facts?
- Mono has been around for over a year.
- Mono has been featured on MSDN.
- To the press, Microsoft has consistantly praised the Mono team.
-
Hmmmm
Re:FUD? (Score:2)
Re:FUD? (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh. If there are undocumented classes (e.g. non public APIs) then they don't need to be implemented because noone uses them. If they're public they need to be documented for people to use them. You can also just call the methods and see the return values with various argument values.
Besides, who cares about Microsoft
The CLI is very much like C + CLIB. You can build proprietry non cross platform libraries on top of it (e.g. Win32) but you can also build open cross platform libaries with it (e.g. OpenGL). Noone is forcing you to use Windows only libraries (e.g. WinForms) when using
Mono may never be 100% compatible with MS.NET but that doesn't prevent it from being an extremely useful development framework.
Re:FUD? (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh. If there are undocumented classes (e.g. non public APIs) then they don't need to be implemented because noone uses them. If they're public they need to be documented for people to use them. You can also just call the methods and see the return values with various argument values.
Microsoft software will use them, and other software will use that Microsoft software. Soon there will be a huge chunk of .NET software that won't run on non-Microsoft platform.
Besides, who cares about Microsoft .NET APIs? The CLI is a good framework regardless of whether you use the Microsoft-only namespaces or not. GTK#, CsGL etc don't need to rely on any non-CLI classes.
It's a large and messy framework made with no understandable purpose other than "making another Java", therefore it's mental masturbation squared (because Java design is mental masturbation -- all its original goals are either abandoned or became irrelevant at the moment when semi-usable implementation was released).
The CLI is very much like C + CLIB. You can build proprietry non cross platform libraries on top of it (e.g. Win32) but you can also build open cross platform libaries with it (e.g. OpenGL). Noone is forcing you to use Windows only libraries (e.g. WinForms) when using .NET.
There is no CLIB, it's libc. And win32 has nothing to do with either, it's an API with its own library, and a horrible one at that.
Mono may never be 100% compatible with MS.NET but that doesn't prevent it from being an extremely useful development framework.
It's a horrible framework -- it is very narrow in functionality and very broad in its stretch over all aspects of program's design and behavior -- basically such infrastructures are for software development what are "wizards" for system administration. Examples of good infrastructure are very rare, I can only name two -- Unix unified file descriptors and Berkeley sockets as a decent large-scale infrastructures that actually serve a valid purpose and improved the software design. The only point of bothering to port it somewhere can be to run software developed for it until people will realize how bad it is and rewrite that software in C or C++ with sanely designed libraries. Same applies to Java but at least Java can be made compatible on all platforms.
Re:FUD? (Score:2)
Can you specifically point out the flaws in the
And please do the same with Java. What specifically is not good design?
Re:FUD? (Score:2)
Mono may never be 100% compatible with MS.NET but that doesn't prevent it from being an extremely useful development framework.
Well, if Mono isn't 100% compatible with .net, then might I not be forced to use .net to do what I want on Windoze? What has been done in the past is that there are APIs that MS shares only with its "partners", or uses for its own software. They have been unwilling to share these APIs,resulting in their own or partner SW shutting SW from other developers out of whole market sectors. I guess we'll have to see if the .net framework is under the jurisdiction of one court or another.
My take is, .net is just a ploy to hook developers and lock them in MS. You can build web services without Java, .net, etc., you can develop and deploy apps without .net, and you can use another infrastructure (like CORBA or RPC) for remoting. As I have said before on /. it's about control and trust. MS wants control, and I don't trust them.
Re:FUD? (Score:2)
Maybe that's just me, but I'd say risk management is keeping a balanced portfolio, or having a certain amount of your assets liquid.
I don't see implementing an agressive compeditor's patent protected standard as of managed risk. "Managed" risk implies that the risk was un-avoidable, I'd say. At any rate, it's Miguel's call, his money.
Gosh, the shared-source license the Microsoft's C# BSD source was released under even had an anti-GPL clause and was packed full of IP traps. How much more clearly can they say it?
Re:FUD? (Score:2)
No, that's applying risk management practices to your portfolio. That would be an implementation of the theory.
"I don't see implementing an agressive compeditor's patent protected standard as of managed risk."
That's not. Risk management is identifying your risks as well as their probability, and then mitigating appropriately.
Let's put it this way. There is a possibility that Miguel will get hit by a bus and die. Now what's the probability of this occuring? It's not likely, but it might happen. As such it's important for your project to identify a backup person for Miguel.
Now there is also a possibility that Washington DC could be hit by an asteroid tomorrow, destabilizing the government and throwing the world into chaos. It's possible right? You can't deny that. But how probable is it? Pretty low, and the govt has risk mitigation in the event such a thing occured so we hope the world wouldn't die in chaos.
Hopefully you get the idea. I grow exceedingly tired of people running around like chicken little and claiming because a thing is possible, that it's gonna happen and if we don't react we're doomed.
"Gosh, the shared-source license the Microsoft's C# BSD source was released under even had an anti-GPL clause and was packed full of IP traps. How much more clearly can they say it?"
You know it's Microsoft's code, and from their point of view they are worried about theft. They wanted to show that it was possible, and provide a proof-of-concept to show how it might be done. Now you can use this, but they don't wish to see it used in a way that competes back against them.
The GPL zealots complain about the same thing all the time, it's why they claim they use the GPL... they don't want their code being used in a commercial project. So why should GNU have this freedom but Microsoft not?
Again, I really wish open source advocates would argue on a basis founded in reality instead of the chicken little possibilities. It'd make the debate more interesting and sound less fanatical.
Re:FUD? (Score:2)
You mean Used as in enduser, not developer.
I just thought I'd clear that up for you, given as how you've decided to take a tactic of distortion of language to make a point.
Re:The Devil (Score:2)
How sad.
Re:The Devil (Score:2)
Merry Xmas and tux bless us EVERY one ;)
Re:The Devil (Score:2)
Not so: This [slashdot.org] was modded down as a troll (apparently because the moderator construed it as Critical of an MS product's behaviour = Anti-MS = Bad) when I was simply stating my own observations.
What's interesting (and a bit amusing, even) is that I implied in the same post that I use a Win2k desktop (which I do).
As for
Re:The Troll (Score:2)
Chilisoft (Now Sun One) ASP has some limitations, including lack of support for ASP 3.0 and VB objects.
Since Sun has announced that they are not going to advance Sun One ASP to ASP.NET, I think that this is a dead product.
Why have I only heard about Eclipse recently? (Score:2)
While Java is my main language, I have been doing some C# work recently using SharpDevelop, which is good, but still needs work. I can't wait to try out the C# plugin for Eclipse.
Re:Why have I only heard about Eclipse recently? (Score:2)
Re:Why have I only heard about Eclipse recently? (Score:2)
Just a guess.
How to bring Microsoft down (Score:4, Interesting)
Just some thoughts. It's not impossible to take them down. I remember when one of our local guys got his cost analysis posted on slashdot (Rockingham County, Virgina). Start flashing those kinds of figures to the bean counters. You may not get many converts right away, but oh well. You have to start somewhere. I've gotten most of my technology-clueless relatives hooked on Mozilla because of its popup blocking ability. My neighbor across the street who is an accountant by trade loves OpenOffice and is looking into switching to RedHat 8. Again, it can be done. Just get them hooked on the Windows/Mac versions of OO, Mozilla, etc and switching to an open source platform will be easy.
As for Mono, MS Legal can't fight if they don't have money :)
Re:How to bring Microsoft down (Score:2)
Star/Open Office in the U.S. government would be the death knell for Microsoft. The U.S. government is not only the largest software purchaser on the planet, but every other business in the U.S., and most of the businesses in the world have some contact with the U.S. government. If the U.S. government standardized on StarOffice formats then businesses around the world would be forced to use StarOffice to some extent. When the U.S. government asks you for a document in a particular format that's the format that you send them. The fact that OpenOffice is free certainly wouldn't hurt its adoption either.
Microsoft would not only find itself losing marketshare, but it would also find itself increasingly on the wrong side of the "standards" fence. Instead of OpenOffice having to be 100% MS Office compatible, Microsoft would find that they would be forced to be 100% OpenOffice compatible. In short, Microsoft would soon find that one of their major cash cows was fighting a losing battle against a package that could be downloaded for free.
Microsoft's revenues would drop, their stock price would take a beating, and companies would switch simply because Microsoft would look like they were "losing."
The best part of this picture is that, to a certain extent, this is already happening overseas. When Microsoft finally does get cut down to size my guess is that StarOffice/OpenOffice is the primary culprit.
Re:How to bring Microsoft down (Score:2)
I believe you can, you just need a boot disk that will in turn boot the cdrom. I think RedHat used to do this, I don't know if it still works...
...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:5, Interesting)
What's the news item here? Fear-mongering about the Evil Microsoft? If you're worried about big companies with riduculous patents ruining society, worry about Amazon.
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and there was also Internet Explorer for Solaris, look how long that was supported.
And Microsoft has communicated with Miguel many times with regards to Mono
Why not communicate to the rest of the industry as to their intentions?
An interview with him on the topic is hosted on MSDN! This does not appear to be a prelude to a lawsuit.
An interview does not make a legal contract either.
Why send so much time and effort with no legal protections? All Mono has is the apparent "good will" of a company known for being overly aggressive to the point of breaking the law on occasion.
And that's not much!
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:3, Informative)
Its worth noting that IBM had Microsoft's "good will" too. Then they got burned on OS/2, not once but twice. Once when Microsoft stole the code to make NT, and once when Microsoft threatened to stop selling IBM Windows if they continued their development efforts on any completing software. And they didn't break the law "on occasion", they broke it every single chance they got.
Sorry, but history shows that having Microsoft's "good will" is nothing more than a one-way ticket to an unpleasant death.
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:2)
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:2)
They really didn't do this. IBM and Microsoft were co-developers on OS/2, WinNT and they were supposed to be somewhat compatible. Well, we see how well that panned out. The best WinNT did was a half-assed compatiblity layer for OS/2 command line apps that technically fulfilled the letter of the agreement, but nothing close to the spirit.
A better example would be how MS kept on screwing up OS/2 running Windows apps underneath. Anybody who remembers OS/2 when it first came out, they touted themselves as a better environment to run Win3.1 apps than either Win3.1 or Win95 (which was brand new at the time). MS played with stuff until it didn't work.
I think one way of seeing how bad of a monopoly MS is that even though companies know that MS is gonna screw them, they still make deals with them. MS killed Stac and Spyglass, Spyglass in a beautiful move that crushed both NCSA commercial spinoffs (Spyglass and Netscape) It severely crippled both Citrix and Mainsoft. But with all that, companies feel they must deal with the devil because they hold all the cards.
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:2)
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:2)
I guess that explains a lot.
Date error (Score:2)
The first release of NT (3.1) was in '93, not '98.
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft courted STAC, then killed them.
Microsoft courted Netscape, then killed them.
Micorsoft courted
Microsoft has never in it's history courted a competitor without either destroying the company through monopolistic practices or by suing them into oblivion.
The only survivor of a Microsoft attempt at technology murder is Java. And that was a close call.
Counter Example (Score:2)
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:2)
IBM says "hi", and also "if it weren't for us you might only know Microsoft as the company that wrote BASIC for the 8-bit Atari computer you used as a kid."
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:2)
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:2)
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:2)
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:3, Insightful)
> Microsoft has already written
> platform (Rotor, for BSD.) And Microsoft has
> communicated with Miguel many times with regards
> to Mono. An interview with him on the topic is
> hosted on MSDN! This does not appear to be a
> prelude to a lawsuit.
No it doesn't, not at the moment, anyway.
But say Microsoft were to come out with a new version of their operating system based on the
Of course, you do remember what happened when you ran a non-Microsoft DOS under Windows, especially DR-DOS? How Microsoft put little tricks in their code to check for DR-DOS and spawn fake error messages? Do you really think they won't do that to Mono? They have done it before, and nothing, especially the government, is stopping them from doing it again. In the end, Linux and Apple (if not forced over to Intel and demoted to a mere Wintel OEM) would share the fate of DR-DOS, and Longhorn 95 would come along, with
Actually, I don't see Microsoft succeeding in this anymore than I see them making their customers happy with Licensing 6. But that doesn't mean they won't try something as gradiose and stupid as the stunt I outlined above. If you must use
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it."
Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Re:...if the comments were insightful, that is. (Score:2)
I'm an old fart, but it seems like every time I've heard that something can't get worse, it can and it does.
Regardless of who has or has not made what promises, Java looks like a much safer proposition because both IBM and Sun are heavily involved. It's a "who watches the watcher" type of thingee and neither IBM nor Sun will be in any mood to let the other "get away" with much. (The customers of both will also have a say in the matter.) Add some Open Source to the brew and I don't think Java is stoppable in the long term.
I once lived near a legal mindfield... (Score:3, Funny)
Self assimilation (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft's strategy is to embrace, extend, and assimilate.
Isn't Mono just self assimilation? What does Microsoft have left to do if OSS just comits fratricide?
MS will be helped by Mono (Score:2, Interesting)
If MS really wants to put the competition under, then
Open Source Innovation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Know thy enemy (Score:2)
worry about Sun patents, not MS patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Sun's patents are much more worrisome as far as I'm concerned. For example, patent number 6,477,702 [uspto.gov], held by Sun, would seem to be infringed by any conforming Java implementation. And Sun has pulled out of every and any process that would have required them to make a declaration or commitment on patent and IP issues related to Java. Furthermore, while Sun PR likes to talk a lot about openness, I have yet to see a legally binding declaration by Sun that would guarantee that third party implementations of Java may use Sun's patents.
I don't trust Microsoft any further than I can throw the entire stack of printed MSDN documentation (which is to say, I don't trust them at all). But, all things considered, I think the risk of patent infringment claims from Microsoft over Mono are very slim indeed. All that hot air from Microsoft CEOs and Microsoft PR folks doesn't change that. Sun, on the other hand, holds known patents that could create real problems for any non-Sun Java implementation.
If you are very worried about patent problems, there is a very easy solution: don't use either Mono or Java--there are plenty of other languages a round, many of them better. If you are slightly worried about patent problems, then Mono looks like a safer choice to me than Java. And probably, you don't really have to worry about patents with either of them.
We don't have to worry about Sun Java patents (Score:2)
(ii) Sun has tolerated those implementations for years now.
(iii) In the past, Sun has never shown to be anti-competitive as microsoft. They don't defend or promote Solaris at any cost the way microsoft does.
you've been duped (Score:4, Informative)
It's Blackdown Java. It is not a third party implementation. Sun simply dumped their source code onto a bunch of people outside Sun who then fixed a bunch of bugs and ported it to Linux.
IBM has had it's JVM for eons now. There are lots of embedded JVMs.
IBM does not have its own Java implementation--they have a license to Sun's Java implementation, and they replace some of Sun's components with their own.
(ii) Sun has tolerated those implementations for years now.
Sun hasn't tolerated anything. As far as I can tell, anybody who is shipping anything remotely resembling a Java platform implementation has a contractual agreement with Sun. In fact, merely to claim that something is Java, you need a contractual agreement with Sun (because of their trademark).
(iii) In the past, Sun has never shown to be anti-competitive as microsoft. They don't defend or promote Solaris at any cost the way microsoft does.
I see no basis for that statement. Sun simply isn't leveraging their monopoly because they don't have one. As a 15 year Sun customer, all the indications I have seen are that Sun is worse than Microsoft when it comes to cut-throat competition and intellectual property, they are simply not as successful.
Re:you've been duped (Score:3, Interesting)
If that's true it's only needed because certain companies, are greedy enough to try to pollute the language with their own platform dependent extensions for their own gain.
There are ton's of JVMs out there, many of the opensource or done by small groups of individuals. I doubt ( but I can't be sure ) that they all have agreements with Sun. http://java-virtual-machine.net/other.html [java-virtual-machine.net]
PS. I've also worked with Sun professionally, but my experience is that I've never seen them try half the stuff I see MS try to pull.
Re:you've been duped (Score:2)
Whatever the reason, it means that Java is not free, and it means that any open source effort that "pollutes" the language might end up in Sun's cross-hairs as well.
There are ton's of JVMs out there, many of the opensource or done by small groups of individuals. I doubt ( but I can't be sure ) that they all have agreements with Sun. http://java-virtual-machine.net/other.html
Yup, there are many JVMs, but those are not independent Java implementations. A Java implementation consists of JVMs together with a complete set of libraries.
There might be independent J2ME implementations somewhere from some small outfit, but there don't seem to be independent J2SE or J2EE implementations, either open source or commercial.
If you think that there are indepdent, open source Java platform implementations, please point me at the non-Sun source code for the part of the implementation that implements Swing.
I've also worked with Sun professionally, but my experience is that I've never seen them try half the stuff I see MS try to pull.
It's only "pulling" with MS because MS has a monopoly. Sun doesn't, so it's legally OK and reasonably accepted for them to do certain things. If MS had 20% of the market, little of what they have done would cause any legal problems.
I'm just saying: you can't rely on Sun's PR statements. Sun is a publically traded company, and if their prior promises were not legally binding, they can reneg on their promises. And they have, in a big way in the past, for example, with Java standardization.
Re:you've been duped (Score:2)
Care to be specific? As a 17-year Sun customer/user (the group I was in at UCB got one of the early Sun 1's) I have not witnessed anything you allude to.
Re:you've been duped (Score:2)
In any case, I'm not saying that anything Sun has done has been wrong. I am saying, however, that you are kidding yourself if you think that you can trust Sun to stick to promises of "openness" any more than you can trust Microsoft. Sun has the same kind of lawyers, PR people, and stock holders. They will say anything that's legal, defensible, and doesn't damage their PR too badly as long as it makes more profit or gets the stock price up; that's not just common sense, it's the fiduciary duty of its officers. And, if anything, Sun has demonstrated that they can't be trusted by pulling out of standardization efforts and failing to pull through on other Java-related promises.
Re:you've been duped (Score:2)
Just as everyone else, including MS. This at worst makes Sun as bad as MS, not worse. Anyway this was truer at the SunOS = 5, AKA Solaris >= 2, is based on AT&T Unix), and they also contributed a lot with NFS, NIS and other such stuff.
Never assign to ill faith what can be explained by incompetence (Napoleon). But what do you have in mind?
Re:you've been duped (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but with people, you have some expectation that there are some that you can trust. With companies, there is no basis ever to have such an expectation.
Were such promises ever made? Not doubting you, but I do not remember them being made.
In 1996, when people like myself were deciding whether to get our companies to support Java big time, yes. Sun definitely told people that they wanted Java to become an open standard, that they wanted to encourage multiple implementations, that they wanted to open source it (but perhaps not under the GPL/LGPL), etc. None of that has really happened.
Can you provide URLs about these things? I am not familiar with them.
Look around JavaGrande.org [javagrande.org], and also take a look at pointers to Java Grande from Sun's site (via Google). Gosling and others were talking about these kinds of features even before the founding of Java Grande in 1998. The only thing that has gotten addressed is some floating point issues.
In any case, the overall point remains: C# delivers all the major points that Sun has promised but not delivered: standardization, full open source implementations (no thanks to Microsoft, however), and decent support for numerical programs (operators, subscripting, iteration, value classes). Furthermore, we know that the core of C#/CLR is not covered by Microsoft patents, while the core of Java/JVM is covered by some Sun patents. I think if openness and features are primary issues, the choice is clear.
I still use Java instead of C# for now, but only because we have a lot of Java legacy code and because the Mono implementation isn't quite up to snuff. In a year or so, I see nothing keeping me with Java.
Re:you've been duped (Score:3, Informative)
-----------
What you're saying isn't really true. IBM has 2 JVM implementations, the JDKs (J2SE) as well as J9, a whole separate Sun-code-free VM which implements J2ME and other custom class libraries.
Re:you've been duped (Score:2)
Oh, yes, it is.
IBM has 2 JVM implementations
And your point is what? We aren't talking about "JVM implementations" we are talking about Java platform implementations.
Furthermore, IBM is a licensee no matter what they implement it or how they implement it, so they are not an example of how Sun lets third parties implement Java freely.
Re:IBM's jvm (Score:2)
No, I'm not. It's just that you have trouble reading carefully.
IBM has two jvm's. They have the Hursley JVM which is a port/licensed jvm based on Sun's source base. However, IBM also own's OTI and OTI has j9, which is a totally clean-room jvm that recently got full certification. So IBM does in fact have it's own JVM.
A "JVM" isn't a "Java" implementation. Furthermore, IBM is a Java licensee, so no matter what they implement, they are not an example of Sun allowing independent third party implementation.
Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents (Score:2)
Can you say Python [python.org]? It has everything expected from Java: cross-platform (interpreted or bytecode), pure object orientation, lots of great libraries included. Plus it's Free and the syntax is very intuitive and powerful, it's arguably the fastest language when it comes to development time.
Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents (Score:2)
Um, no. Try Ruby. Cleaner OO, too.
Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents (Score:2)
- It does not have a clear cross-platform GUI (Tkinter doesn't work on OS X, wxPython isn't a standard part of the platform binary distributions).
- Many packages rely on native code in shared libraries.
- Python byte code is orders of magnitude slower than Java or C# code.
- Python does not have optional static type checking.
- It is hard to make standalone, self-contained applications out of it.
- Python does not have a well-defined language standard, nor does it have multiple independent implementations.
Python could be more of a contender if someone built a good native code compiler for it. None of the current attempts are very good or result in much speedup.The way it is, Python is good for many scripting and prototyping applications. But for a general-purpose, high-quality programming language, we still have to look elsewhere.
Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents (Score:2)
You must try psyco [sourceforge.net], the specializing compiler for Python. I've benchmarked it, it's amazing, it speeds Python up to within a factor of two of C/C++, and it's seamless.
Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents (Score:2, Informative)
Python is a great language. It has problems, but not those you mention.
It does not have a clear cross-platform GUI (Tkinter doesn't work on OS X, wxPython isn't a standard part of the platform binary distributions).
Those that actually care about client GUI libs can install their own. In this respect, Python is no different from C, and in fact, has more GUI bindings than C!
Many packages rely on native code in shared libraries.
And your point is...? That's like saying "many parts of my house rely on the shared frame".
Python byte code is orders of magnitude slower than Java or C# code.
For real-world tasks, Python execution speed is more than fast enough. When it's not, the bottlenecks can be easily identified and moved to C, or optimized away by the machine using Psyco. Using Psyco, my neural net code ran 5x faster. But the real thing you're missing here is this: developer time is more valuable than machine time, as machine time can be saved using other methods.
Python does not have optional static type checking.
And I thank God it does not! Static type checking solves a very narrow programming problem and requires a tremendous amount of coding for the developer.
It is hard to make standalone, self-contained applications out of it.
No, it's not hard to make stand-alone, or to embed it in other applications. There are multiple proven techniques to bundle the interpreter with a parts of the standard library and third-party code. That you don't know this makes me believe you don't really know python, either.
Python does not have a well-defined language standard, nor does it have multiple independent implementations.
Oh, my! The language definition is quite well-defined and very consistent. And there are two open-source implementations on separate platforms: python in C [python.org] and python on Java [jython.org]
Python could be more of a contender if someone built a good native code compiler for it. None of the current attempts are very good or result in much speedup.
Psyco [sf.net] speeds up python by optimizing chunks of code at run time. The neat thing is that it does this against python code, so python becomes faster by more of it being written in python.
The way it is, Python is good for many scripting and prototyping applications. But for a general-purpose, high-quality programming language, we still have to look elsewhere.
NASA. ILM. Google. Please.
Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents (Score:3, Insightful)
- No support for value classes.
- Java generics are not type safe across compilation units.
- Java arrays require dynamic type checks.
- No iteration syntax.
- Does not have basic operator overloading (arithmetic operators).
- Does have non-operator overloading.
- Poorly thought out source file and binary file packaging conventions.
- Casts are prefix.
- No lexical closures.
- Java2D bindings to non-Windows environments are low quality.
- Some very poorly thought out core libraries: I/O, image handling, text/string.
These, and other problems with Java seriously limit its utility and scope. Java is decent for the server side hacking where it is currently popular, but it's a poor choice for things like numerical and semi-numerical algorithms. C# improves on it somewhat.Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Mono also implements parts of
In comparison, Sun has granted the Apache and all open source developers FULL access to the specs, test kits and granted the full rights to develop competing products under the JSPA . Sun has also fully pened up the Java development standards process under the new Java Community Process (JCP) . Even to the point of granting full open source re-implentations of J2EE such as JBoss
JBoss received the green light last week, after Sun told ComputerWire that it would allow all of the APIs contained in J2EE 1.4 to be open sourced. Fleury had expressed concern that certain critical APIs, including Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 2.1, would be not be made available to open source organizations.
However, Java Community Process director Onno Kluyt said: "Sun's plan with 1.4 is that although it started before JCP 2.5, by the time it ships it will allow the creation of independent implementations. I don't think the APIs are that interesting, because the license that sits on top of J2EE will allow that [independent implementations]".
Re:worry about Sun patents, not MS patents (Score:2)
That objection is irrelevant, for several reasons. First, we pretty much know what the related Microsoft's and Sun's patents are. Microsoft does not appear to hold any key patents necessary for any parts of .NET that most people would care about, and they almost certainly don't hold any patents on the core C#/CLR language and runtime. Second, since .NET is not a well-defined platform, even if small parts of it cannot be reimplemented due to patent issues, it doesn't affect much of anything.
For Sun, in contrast, we know that they hold key patents on core Java technology. Furthermore, Sun has made no legally binding commitments to letting others use those patents in their implementations. And, if you fail to implement parts of the Java 2 platform, you basically fail to implement Java.
However, Java Community Process director Onno Kluyt said: [...]
That's all a bunch of hot air, nothing legally binding. We know that Sun holds key patents on core technologies required to implement a conforming JVM. Sun has made no commitment to allowing commercial third party implementations, and even for open source implementations, it's all a bunch of inferences and promises. Anybody who actually wants to create a third party Java implementation has to get something from Sun in writing or forever live at risk of a lawsuit. And that will be true until Sun's patents enter the public domain.
It's pretty clear at this point that Microsoft holds no patents on core C#/CLR technology, and we can presume that they designed C#/CLR to avoid running afoul of any Sun patents. Whatever patents Microsoft may hold are at best tangential. Overall, that leaves us with a significantly better situation for C#/CLR than Java/JVM: with Java/JVM, we have to trust Sun's promises, with C#/CLR, we don't have to trust anybody.
You know better that MS's CEO? (Score:3, Insightful)
You however, blithely dismiss all of this and claim to know better, eh?
Meanwhile, Sun is actively working on supporting groups for open implementations of Java and you attempt to disclaim it as "hot air". Please tell us what particular patents we "all know that Sun holds". Be specific as David was.
Then, finally, we troll off on a tangent by talking about C# and CLR. We all know that MS has submitted these two tiny portions of
This, however, isn't the issue. The issue is
Incorrect (Score:2)
Thanks the the JCP, you don't have to worry about patented ideas polluting additions. That's what I call a standards body, not a puppet show.
Has nobody read the ZDNet article? (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, it says "unofficial", but don't spread FUD until there's some updated (the Ballmer quote is from March) official information.
Some information for the lost and confused (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's introduction is here [microsoft.com].
Mono's information is here [go-mono.org].
I had a choice... (Score:2, Funny)
Sleeping would have been more intellectually stimulating than reading this nonsense. I'll remember that next year.
Re:I had a choice... (Score:2)
amen, brother. the amount of noise on this site has become mind boggling. thought-out messages don't get posted here very often anymore.
there are days when i'm tempted to just change my password to some random string, and log off forever. and yet i don't, though i'm not sure why. maybe it's nostalgia.
MS patents (all patents) are a potential problem! (Score:5, Insightful)
Another important thing to understand is Mono isn't the only Free Software project out there that is implementing the ECMA standards. DotGNU/Portable.NET [dotgnu.org] has a large par t of the ECMA specs implemented and the design goal of PNet is ECMA not the rest of MS's
So the conclusion to draw from this is: Patents are a danger to Free Software in every direction! Not just this one particular project...
Don't forget dotGNU... (Score:4, Interesting)
They've actually done some stuff much different than Mono. For starters, their compiler is in C not C#. And it's able to general IL as well as Java bytecode and hs some other interesting approaches; not huge, but still very cool. One thing I find interesting with various OS vs. closed source projects - their approach.
From the code perspective, we read the Ecma spec and then crank out some code. If M$ has the entire spec patented as various 'processes' then I guess they could take the authors of Mono and dotGNU to court. It would be complicated tho and I'm sure there's already prior art out there for Strings, Input Buffers, Webservices, etc..
Frankly, I joined dotGNU because the Java tools are very mature and after working with them for the past 5 years, I'm really bored doing 'enterprise web apps'. There's much more fun, for me, in getting the foundation built; seeing how and if it will actually work. For me, all the top most layers are just fluff.
As far as ASP.NET goes, I'm actually thinking of something along the lines of a C# version of Java Servlets and JSPs. I've done ASP and I personally think it's pretty filthy. JSP can be just as much, but there are definitely more patterns applied to Servlets/JSPs than ASP. A C# implementation of the Servlet/JSP spec would be an interesting thing; and possible too! Altho, I obviously wouldn't be 'compliant', but could work the same with just a little different syntax.
Anyway, I finally realized that
Third time lucky, will Microsoft listen (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I am not alone in my concerns about Microsoft's patent threat, even Red Hat Chairman and CEO Matthew Szulik has said [crn.com] that Microsoft's legal efforts to challenge open source by employing patent infringement law represent a big threat.
Microsoft could settle this issue by making a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA.
nails get hammered (Score:2)
Borland are developing their own architectural solution for
People are you reading this!?! (Score:3, Informative)
Asked by CollabNet CTO Brian Behlendorf whether Microsoft will enforce its patents against open source projects, Mundie replied, "Yes, absolutely." An audience member pointed out that many open source projects aren't funded and so can't afford legal representation to rival Microsoft's. "Oh well," said Mundie. "Get your money, and let's go to court."
and
"Heise report about Steve Ballmer's talk at CeBit. At a speech event together with chancellor Schroeder, Ballmer says that Microsoft owns lots of patents which cover its new DotNet standard and that it aims to use them to prevent opensource implementations of DotNet. The key phrases read, in translation:"
I'm using Eclipse... (Score:2, Interesting)
...for almost all of my Java development, on both Linux and Windows systems -- and I ship the entire project to my client, who runs Eclipse on his Macs. The same projects work across all three platforms. Why so many systems? Well, let's just say that Java is a "Write once, test everywhere..." language.
I don't use IBM's SWT -- my app needs to be portable, and Swing is working just fine under Eclipse. Don't believe the ignorati who say the Eclipse forces you to write SWT apps -- it doesn't. Eclipse is part of IBM's attempt to control Java -- but considering the piss-poor job Sun does at times, I think they need a little competition.
As for Mono -- anyone who relies on it for the portability of their applications is fooling themselves. I've used .Net since it's beta days; it is a blatant move by Microsoft to lock people into an architecture they control. MS learned the value of a VM-based language when they started implementing Java; when they couldn't "embrace and extend" Java, MS created a semi-clone. I recognize .Net's prupose and goals; it has value in certain situations, but it is not an open standard that guarantees portability.
DotGNU ? (Score:2, Informative)
Well... (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, that Mono. Nevermind.
Microsoft and Mono. (Score:2, Insightful)
They could look at this as free marketing, because I didn't give a damn about
Jason Fisher
sci-fi novel? (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, anyone can make spelling mistakes. But this sounds like a great idea for a sci-fi novel ... our intrepid heroes carefully make their way through a mindfield, using an, er, mindsweeper ...
I have my own solution to .NET (Score:2)
KFG
ISO etc. (Score:2, Interesting)
Confessions of a card-carrying Microsoft dot-whore (Score:3, Interesting)
It is easy to support Microsoft-based initiatives when you work for a company large enough to qualify for Microsoft partner discounts on development software. A $2500/year subscription/blackmail fee pretty much gives you access to any and all commercial software sold by Microsoft. You get used to have all the cool stuff arrive on CD or DVD every month or so and nothing stops you from building one more development box just to test Whatever.net. Who cares if you got a room with 20+ development servers on a 100+ employee company anyway?
Things change once you move to the small business field. Suddenly you don't have a shitload of cash to burn, and the $2500/year can probably pay one or two PCs for coworkers. You barely manage to afford one lousy development server, and your production schedule is so hectic that you cannot afford to drop development on asp (dirt cheap, you can pick asp programmers literally everywhere) to make the jump to asp.net, which means you will need Visual Studio and eventually more expensive windows.net server licenses.
I was put in that position when I switched jobs and joined an 11-employee firm to be their techno geek (I got so tired of explaining to people my job that I just tell them my job is to isolate the CEO and President from technical stuff). Then the soul searching started?
1. Do I commit my company to a $2500/year MSDN subscription? We are not a software shop, all our development is internal.
2. Do I make the jump to
3. Do I keep the current solution as asp and wait for the end-of-life of asp before I try to move up to
4. What about php? I have run a phpnuke website successfully for a long time and I am sure I can rewrite my company's solution to php.
5. What about SQL Server? I absolutely love SQL Server 2000, but how much will I have to relearn when the new one comes out? And will I have odbc connectivity to php in case I want to jump out?
6. What about mySQL? A couple years ago mySQL was nowhere close to ACID, but right now it is almost there. And my mySQL install runs as stable as my SQL Server. When can I trust mySQL with corporate data?
The list of questions goes forever. I finally decided to do nothing. The current toolset in asp runs itself and does not make me waste a lot of time in code maintenance. Performance is acceptable for our usage. I am not going to move us up to asp.net just so I can say it runs on
I would like to be able to buy a $1500 Compaq 1U rack drawer and know I only have to put freeBSD, Apache, mySQL and php and I am set, instead of having to go thru the stupid requisitioning process to get Windows server licenses and CALs every time I deploy a windows server.
When people ask me why I am on a mac (switched in September 2002) but I still use Microsoft products (IE, Ms Office v.X and the xbox) I tell them my beef with Microsoft is not about monopoly this or predatory that. I have valid business concerns and complaints, and
Re:C# of the 2000s is the RPG of the 1970s (Score:2, Insightful)
Any company which invests in proprietary programming lanugages must not expect to be around very long, or is happy giving a cut of the profits to other companies forever.
Re:Santa Clause? Not Microsoft! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Santa Clause? Not Microsoft! (Score:2, Funny)
He's worse than a commie bastard. He's a commie bastard fool.
People have leeched trillions of dollars by ripping off his valuable trademark image, and he's done nothing to stop it. He is such a poor steward of his own intellectual property that he should be sued for negligence.
His business plan sucks:
1) His elven employees make toys all year
2) Give away toys
3) WTF ???????? No profit!!!
This is worse than any .COM boondogle. When he runs out of cash, all of his elves are going to be out in the street. How can he live with himself?
I've got news for all of the slasbots out there: there's no such thing as a free sugarplum. This Santa fairy tail is going to end soon. Milk and cookies don't pay the rent. Mark my words, if Saint Nicholas wants to make a go of it in this economy against heavyweights like Wal Mart and Best Buy, he's going to have to demand that people leave a major credit card out for him. And he's going to have to charge a steep premium for holiday home delivery and setup. The writing's on the wall, folks. It's time to pay a fair price for your toys.
Re:WTF? RTFM! FAQ! LOL! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:WTF? RTFM! FAQ! LOL! (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/10/2/43
Microsoft's introduction is here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/pro
Mono's information is here:
http://www.go-mono.org/rationale.html
Re:Eclipse and SWT on Monster (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Open any swing application
2. Right click the mouse button somewhere a context menu should appear, or click on one of the file menus.
3. Wait 3 seconds
4. Form the incorrect conclusion that Java is slow
5. Go back to using native win32 programs
Sun's been trying to "fix swing" for the last 5 years, and they've had no luck. What makes you think IBM has the magic bullet?
Swing will never be fast. The same abstractions that make it such a joy to program with make it terribly inefficiant. Print out a stack trace in a event handler function in swing and take a look at how deep it is. Every one of those functions had to be called before the event was process, and ever call had to be done through a table lookup. I'll avoid going into the whole native vs. non-native widgets debate, but forgive me if I remain skeptical about the non-native approach sun has been using with swing.
IBM (well, the company that wrote eclipse that IBM bought) did the right thing when they started from scratch to design SWT. Eclipse is amazingly responsive when compared to any swing application I've seen. Try it out yourself, I think you'll be impressed.
Re:Eclipse and SWT on Monster (Score:2, Interesting)
I do wish that SWT had its own documentation and a separate download though. It would make it easier to use.
I haven't observed that Swing is that slow under JDK 1.4. Most complaints about Swing being slow are based on earlier versions.
That being said, I'm interested in evaluating SWT. Still, Swing is a nice toolkit, and the fact that it is so ubiquitous makes it an easy choice to use it to write against.
This would especially be the case if the preliminary injunction is upheld and suddenly the Java Plug-In shows up on millions of computers. Swing applets are pretty cool. Still, you could bundle swt.jar with your applet I guess.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:2)
The bottom line is we can't trust Microsoft to do anything other than what they have always done. Use their monopoly power to crush anything that even has the slightest chance of competing.
Re:.NET potability? (Score:2)
I recommend Dev-c++ instead (Score:2)
Dev-c++ was easy. I just selected "new project" and selected the project I wanted. No bizaare menu's obstructing my menu space. Just a class browser and a source editor. When you compile a project with Dev-C++, the debugger and compiler log pop out just like Visual c++. Its very well integrated. The only downside is its very c/c++ oriented while Eclipse is java oriented with beta level c++ support.
Eclipse screenshots are here [eclipse.org] and devc++ is here. [bloodshed.net]
Re:what does "mindfield" mean? (Score:2)