De Icaza Says Microsoft Has Shot .NET Ecosystem In Foot
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An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot because of the constant threat of patent infringement that it has cast on the system, Novell vice-president and Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza is quoted as telling the website Software Development Times recently."
De Icaza is Novell veep? (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to respect that company (NetWare 3.11, NDS, NetWare 5.0, GroupWise, ZenWorks, all top-notch tech, IMHO).
Now, a tad less.
Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
It took how many years for Miguel de Icaza to realize this? Most of us could have told him that with seconds.
So Miguel finally figured it out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wah wah wah (Score:5, Insightful)
So is he allowed to be surprised or angry now?
He was a retard (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pwahahahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude... (chicks don't react like that) .NET is supposed to be cross hard- and software.
It was introduced to abstract the OS so that if Microsoft were to also release Windows for PowerPC's or whatever architecture, .NET apps would still run,
Later on Microsoft announced the interoperability (this is my time to "Pffffffwahahahahaha") and they killed it with patent infringements.
So now, yes, Microsoft has shot the .NET ecosystem in the foot, which is differently from shooting it in the head.
What I am saying is yes; .NET is still very strong and succesful, but limited to Windows pretty much. Good for Microsoft and Windows, bad for the ecosystem itself that had spread to other OS platforms with Mono (which is chasing taillights and thus sucks).
Re:Not very persuasive... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it limps alright. Just take a look at StackOverflow [stackoverflow.com].
Re:Pwahahahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft's idea of cross platform is one of their platforms; like Windows 2000, XP, Vist and 7.
Re:Wah wah wah (Score:4, Insightful)
So, Miguel (Score:4, Insightful)
can we get that diseased crap out of GNOME?
Re:Not very persuasive... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wah wah wah (Score:5, Insightful)
So is he allowed to be surprised or angry now?
Of course he is.
And we're allowed to roll our eyes and say "No shit, Sherlock! Welcome to five years ago!"
I mean sure he's slow on the uptake. Sure it was pretty silly to dismiss the quite plain threat of Microsoft's patents with "Oh but they won't do that!" But hey, at least the "but they won't do that!" turns into "gee, it's looking like that's exactly what they plan to do" eventually.
Doesn't mean I think he's any smarter than I did yesterday. But sure he's allowed to change his mind, and that's a good thing.
.NET is a Marketing Term (Score:3, Insightful)
Miguel was enamored with a lot of the technology behind ".NET", and thought he could outsmart Microsoft, in a sense. He thought he would be pragmatic and non-religious about the technology and adopt it.
What he never realized, and is maybe now only starting to realize, is that .NET is a *marketing* term. It was brilliantly crafted by Microsoft's marketing people. As smart as their developers are and as cool as Miguel thought their engineering and technology is, their marketing is far and away better and more sophisticated. .NET is a brilliant marketing strategy. Miguel didn't realize that by using the '.NET' term so incessantly, he was basically ensuring that he would be in the position that he's in now.
Sure, there was C# and the CLR. That was probably 10% of ".NET", which was a overarching strategy for the *Windows* ecosystem at the time that involved extending Windows into the Internet as much as possible, including "tieing" it into all sorts of Microsoft-oriented services that were MSN at the time.
Think about it. VisualStudio.NET. What the !@#$ does that mean? It's a branding term. Miguel showed his complete lack of understanding of marketing by using that term so regularly and continuously WRT Mono.
That took guts to admit, Miguel (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone else has been saying that forever, but to hear it from you.. I'm impressed.
Re:C# and F# (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the biggest lamentation I have is regarding C#. I keep on hearing how it's a wonderful improvement on C++, which is my bread-and-butter language.
I wouldn't be too sad. C# is really more of an improvement on Java than it is on C++. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume there's a reason you use C++ and not Java, and those reasons would probably still mean you'd use C++ over C#.
Re:Pwahahahaha (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not very persuasive... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say check the Tiobe index [tiobe.com] for a more accurate record. You'd think that a major corporation like Microsoft could garner more popularity than PHP instead of less than half.
Re:So, Miguel (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pwahahahaha (Score:0, Insightful)
The harm is done (Score:5, Insightful)
He already pushed Mono into a lot of parts of Gnome...harm is already done De Icaza, you had to realize before pushing it into one of the most widely used Linux desktop enviroments.
Re:The original SD Times article. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Unlike the Java world that is blossoming with dozens of vibrant Java Virtual Machine implementations, the .NET world has suffered by this meme spread by [Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer] that they would come after people that do not license patents from them."
In practice, the Java community only uses two or three JVMs (IBM's, JRockit, and OpenJDK from Sun), while others are research efforts or smaller-scale open-source projects, said author and consultant Ted Neward. "Virtual machines are not something the open-source community seems to want to experiment with."
What the hell kind of rhetorical diversion that was?
"I love air", de Icaza was quoted as saying. "Breathing oxygen is a wonderful thing. I couldn't get through a single day without oxygen."
In practice, oxygen only accounts for about 20% of Earth's atmosphere, said author and consultant Ted Neward. "O2 just isn't something that the open source community wants to inhale frequently."
Tip: Java isn't popular because people work on multiple JVMs (however small in their number they might be). The point de Icaza was making is that Java is popular because there can be multiple JVMs.
so what, Miguel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Snakes bite, buddy, that's why we don't play with them.
I don't know why you keep thinking that Microsoft wants some sort of "ecosystem". They want control, but they're always willing to use a useful idiot.
Re:Pwahahahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
Sun shot Java in the foot a few times.
Microsoft abused its monopoly position to shoot Java at short range.
Re:Not very persuasive... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of questions means lots of confusion. I think all you proved is a severe lack of documentation or how newbies are confused as hell by it.
Or, maybe, lots of questions just means lots of newbies?
Or it could even mean that StackOverflow is historically more .NET-centric, so that's where you go to ask .NET questions; and Java ones are asked elsewhere.
I'd say check the Tiobe index [tiobe.com] for a more accurate record. You'd think that a major corporation like Microsoft could garner more popularity than PHP instead of less than half.
TIOBE index is extremely unaccurate due to their, ahem, "methodology" [tiobe.com], and they even tell so themselves.
It is particularly inaccurate with respect to .NET, because you need to extract VB.NET out of all BASIC job offerings, add C#, and then add all positions that just say ".NET" without specifying the language (which isn't even tracked on TIOBE), to get a real figure.
Then, also, think about what it measures - if you look at what is found by googling for "PHP programming" (which is what TIOBE does, pretty much), it's mostly various tutorials/howtos. So, it effectively measures the amount of learning material available online for a given tech, including any low-quality and duplicate ones. It's no secret that there's a crapload of that for PHP. In fact, by your logic, it would indicate that PHP is so bad, since it needs so much tutorials to teach people to do things, no?
Instead of TIOBE, why don't you open your nearest job search website, and look at the number of available .NET positions vs Java ones? (the ratio will vary quite a bit by region/country, by the way)
Re:What were you expecting Miguel? (Score:3, Insightful)
Novell paid for patent protection, so Novell shipping Mono is fairly safe. The problem is Ubuntu shipping Mono without patent protection, or Red Hat for that matter.
As for Microsoft playing nice, I doubt that is their motivation, but the EU is basically demanding that Microsoft work on interopability.
The Microsoft/Novell deal really does make sense for both parties. Novell doesn't have to worry about patent lawsuits. They get to go to existing Microsoft shops and tell them that Novell is the best Linux flavor to integrate into existing Microsoft environments.
Microsoft gets to hold FUD over Red Hat's head saying "if you run Red Hat, you may get sued!" For customers who might consider a Linux migration, Microsoft doesn't lose them as customers. For one, they're less likely to move over 100% to a full Red Hat/Linux environment when Microsoft can tell them to shift only a few systems to Linux with Novell/SLES and interoperate with existing Microsoft products. Even better, they buy the Linux licenses through Microsoft and maintain the client/vendor relationship.
So long as it appeases the EU, and it remains mutually beneficial to both sides, Microsoft will play nice with Novell.
Re:O rly. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pwahahahaha (Score:4, Insightful)
How is java's cross platform ability a myth? How many java programs that you know of are not cross platform when written correctly? With the not very notable exception of a few non-standard libraries, the occasional difference in performance and developers that hard-code file paths, java works very well on multiple platforms.
Re:C# and F# (Score:3, Insightful)
As a general rule, getters and setters suck. They're one step better than making variables public.
Your class APIs should be based on how the class should behave, not on how it's implemented. This may include getters and setters on particular member variables, but if you really miss properties you're almost certainly doing it wrong.
This applies to all OO languages with more or less the C++ model, including C# and Java.
Why "pragmatism" and "ignoring reality" don't mix (Score:5, Insightful)
Miguel was enamored with a lot of the technology behind ".NET", and thought he could outsmart Microsoft, in a sense. He thought he would be pragmatic and non-religious about the technology and adopt it.
I've been saying it for years -- real pragmatism must always include consideration of the practical realities surrounding a tool or technology. Like, who is providing it, what are the terms under which they provide it, could those terms change and how would that affect your use of the tool? Or as you point out, how does the technology you like (C#) fit into the larger strategy being pushed (.NET)?
Many engineers tend to want to ignore those aspects and focus solely on the qualities of the tool itself. They say they just want something that "does the job", and thus fail to consider how those factors affect the tool's ability to do the job. Because, being technically-minded people, they want the technical factors to be the only ones that matter. They call this "pragmatism" and being "non-religious".
Which just goes to show how even people who value pragmatism and rationality more than anyone can still be completely irrational. Ignoring the important external factors because you really wish they weren't important is not rational!
Rationality is simply a useful trick that our mammalian brains have picked up. But at the end of the day we are still emotional animals, and even when expending great effort to force ourselves to think rationally we can't eliminate the effect of our emotions. Much of the time "rationality" is simply a way to justify what we've already decided based on emotion.
Ergo the worst thing a person who values rationality can do is tell themselves that they are completely rational and uninfluenced by emotion. I think there's an important lesson to be learned here, even for those of us who saw this situation coming from a mile away.
Re:Paint.NET (Score:4, Insightful)
Paint.NET is far too usable to be compared to Gimp.
Mono etc (Score:2, Insightful)
The idea that MS has shot .net in the foot because of people who use Mono is just hyperbole. I'd guess that 99.999% of people using .net do so on Windows.
Despite being a .net developer, I'd choose Python or Java if I had to do a project on Linux.
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
.NET too tied to OS (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of the strongest minds in computer science have built out .NET, and continue to do so. There are some practicality gaps, but today the majority of the corporate world is powered by .NET devs, for better or worse.
However, this many years into the platform, it's starting to show it's age. From .NET 1.0 applications, laden with crude pinvokes to Win32 API's, GDI+ silliness, messy ADO.NET integration, through 2.0, 3.5, 4.0, the "Enterprise" helper classes, the "Foundation Extensions", the integration of pseudo-SQL declarative syntax with LINQ, Entity Relation classes, Unity, security, contracts, plus all of the layers of ASP.NET tools .... don't VS's forget code analysis, test suites, code coverage, profiling, generated documentation... there are many more but you get the point... ...all this is shaping up to be a very MS-centric view of the .NET universe. Which is a mistake, De Icaza seems to imply. I wholeheartedly agree. While the computing world abandons PCs for most tasks (gaming, editing information aside) and info consumption is done via smaller devices, on a variety of hardware & OS's, MS has bound .NET to their OS deployments - and there will be many other OS's talking in that space.
This is Microsoft's biggest gamble with .NET: That as the OS lives or dies, so does this platform. Really, it could be bigger than Windows. If MS shipping a full (even licensed) 4.0+ framework for use on Linux & Apple, it would inject a massive growth spurt in both those platforms but a huge and lasting foothold on the MS-based app development.
Re:Pwahahahaha (Score:4, Insightful)
>> Windows for PowerPC's or whatever architecture,
no way dude. MS
LoB
Re:C# and F# (Score:0, Insightful)
I wonder how many of the posters here have actually used .NET and C# (checking it out for two days does not count). Now, don't get me wrong - I think Microsoft has made (and continues to make) some horrible products, but .NET is not one of them. It is my theory that Microsoft was and still is a company of and for developers (developers developers), and it is in their products for that audience where they really shine.
I've used C++ for years, and I've also done Java. C# (in the Microsoft IDE and running on the Microsoft .NET implementation) is amazingly easy to program, a platform geared towards maximum productivity, and yet powerful enough that you will rarely need to resort to C++ interop. And if you do it right, the performance will be just as good as the C++ counterpart (no doubt thanks to heavy optimization of the CLR). I've recently switched to Mac and am developing in Objective C. With all the wonders and delight that OSX gives me as a user, coding Object C feels like I just went through a wormhole and ended up in 1998.
Yes, .NET is closed-source and locked down and that's fucking stupid. It'll be sad to see something like this go to waste.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? When did Stallman ever say that Microsoft "shot .NET in the foot" (paraphrased)? I'm sure he said .NET was evil. That Mono was equally evil. But Miguel's quote does not, to my knowledge, echo a single damn thing Stallman has ever said.
Maybe you should try actually reading and comprehending the text of the quote, first, before you try and fit it into your own ideological mold?
Re:Pwahahahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally (Score:2, Insightful)
And he said .NET is evil because it's patent ridden. To which de Icaza responded saying "it's ok, they promised not to sue"(paraphrased). So, what about my mold? Maybe I'm missing something.
Java's radical change (Score:5, Insightful)
Java embodys one radical change, and it's not a feature of the language (which was pretty radical itself at the start). No, the radical feature is that it's GPL'd. This change came a little late in the game, but look what it's produced already.
Take Android. You might say 'just another smartphone platform', but think about how it came about. Google didn't develop it. A startup did. And how was it possible for a startup to build an entire internet-capable touchscreen platform? GPL. Because they had a free OS they could use any way they wanted, and a free virtual machine they could use any way they wanted, they were able to get creative and package it all together as an innovative new platform. Google bought it, added polish and apps, and suddenly it's an iPhone and Android world with Microsoft playing catch up.
Microsoft can't do this. They are committed to their proprietary OS, so they are unable to harness any major creative leaps that come from outside the company. Outsiders can't play with the OS to tweak it to their needs, so they have no way to use Windows as a platform for creativity that doesn't fit into the channels that Microsoft provides them. Plus, they know that any really good ideas they develop on the Microsoft platform will likely be copied by Microsoft and never realize their potential (for them, at least).
But the Android folks could start with minimal overhead and produce something great under the radar.
That's the beauty of the GPL and the Linux (and now Java) models based on it. DVR's, netbooks, cheap wireless routers, smartphones, Kindle and 100 tablets to come. The Microsoft ecosystem is not capable of producing these things. So the next time you rag on Java or OpenGL, X-Windows or even OpenOffice - and rhapsodize about C#, .NET, MSOffice, etc., realize that you're missing the point. These tools may not individually be the absolute best in class, but they are all much more than good enough. And they enable the most creative and dynamic ecosystems in IT today. If you care about that, C# vs Java is a no-brainer. You're gonna want Java.
Miguel seems to be just now grasping this. He had hoped that a free version of .NET would be as good as Java. He liked the technology better (not sure how much better), and thought making it free would bring it to the creative class that's really innovating these days. But Microsoft won't let him. Never meant to, never will. Sorry Miguel - I feel your pain.
Re:Wah wah wah (Score:3, Insightful)
It is useless to hate a rabid dog, but it is dangerous to ignore that it is a rabid dog and will bite anyone who comes too close.
Microsoft is not to be loved or hated, but it is to be treated as a dangerous animal and kept in its place.
Re:O rly. (Score:4, Insightful)
.NET was released in July of 2000.
And Google uses a mix of languages and tools: different features require different tools and all that. Had there been no legal problems, it would have been a no-brainer to use .NET over other technologies.
It did not have to be Mono, it could have been a third party .NET implementaion.
Re:So, Miguel (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pwahahahaha (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pwahahahaha (Score:2, Insightful)
Having just spent the last several months coding in C#, I can fully state that C# is far inferior to Java, and provides even less type safety than Java.
I'd love to hear how and why you think that C# is more advanced and superior to Java, or any other language.
Re:You need to engage with the frameworks (Score:1, Insightful)
"userspace" has a well defined meaning, quite different from "desktop". It's a very useful term, although sometimes misused. "kernel" is also well-defined, quite different from "stuff hidden behind the scenes".
If your intention was to simplify things, then why not just call all of it "computer stuff".
Re:Pwahahahaha (Score:3, Insightful)
Except C++ requires a re-compile for so
much as moving from the intel to sparc version of the same OS. Massive difference.
I can dabble with java desktop apps now. Where are the C based or win-based cross arch equivalents?
No Santa Claus (Score:3, Insightful)
I feel kind of bad for Miguel, he sounds like a kid, who just realized that there is no Santa Claus. It's sad.
Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, even the most studious lack of infringement won't prevent you from getting abusively sued into bankruptcy. It's all about the implied threat, Miguel.
Re:Wah wah wah (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you're getting a hard time in this thread but it has to be taken for what it is.
Re:Wah wah wah (Score:2, Insightful)
So, err, you're building all of this, and trying to attract developers... on the basis of: well, maybe they won't sue us because everyone is a crook and Microsoft probably won't see a benefit in suing you for using it, so...?
I can't be the only one thinking 'WTF' here.
Seriously, Miguel - you need something better than that.
Re:O rly. (Score:3, Insightful)
Google uses a range of technologies but as far as I can tell it doesn't use Windows on its servers, partly because it needs the flexibility to do quite advanced things with Linux to gain performance. The big attraction of .NET is not the CLR but the .NET libraries, which still aren't replicated on Mono - so why would Google choose to use .NET and limit its options to a closed source OS owned by its biggest competitor?