Re: [The Java Posse] Mono FUD? No, it's called "being rational"

[Fernando Cassia]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 3:22 AM, <java...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Mono's main mission seems to be championing Microsoft technologies and
standards with product innovation and quality serving as a means to that
end. So for people who are resistant to that style of Microsoft fanaticism
and want to avoid an all-Microsoft, Microsoft-everywhere, avoid Mono is
logical.

Luckily Mono will go down sooner rather than later, together with its sponsor, SUSE, although it remains to be seen if Id de Icaza will go down with it, too.

In fact, a great news is the shutdown of the Silverlight Linux clone, Moonlight, which was useless anyway (the only usage scenario I have is for paid VOD sites, and those require the DRM components of Silverlight that Moonlight never provided).

Moonlight is dead, and so is Silverlight
http://www.muktware.com/3644/moonlight-dead-so-silverlight

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Miguel de Icaza, the creator of Mono, and Moonlight has announced that Moonlight will no longer be maintained.

Moonlight was not in a very healthy state. de Icaza told me during an interview that there are many reasons why Moonlight could never become a true alternative of Silverlight, why services like Netflix could never work under Linux.

In a recent interview de Icaza has made it clear that Moonlight is now dead. "We have abandoned Moonlight. These days we no longer believe that Silverlight is a suitable platform for write-once-run-anywhere technology, there are just too many limitations for it to be useful."

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But wait, it gets better:

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But why is his company Xamarin suddenly dropping Moonlight? de Icaza explains, "Silverlight has not gained much adoption on the web, so it did not become the must-have technology that I thought would have to become." In addition, "Microsoft added artificial restrictions to Silverlight that made it useless for desktop programming."

Isn't it a wakeup call for developers to stay away from Microsoft technologies such as C#, .NET and Mono. Why to enrich the ecosystem of a company which is known for abusing its power to weaken free software?

A reddit user sums it very well, "From my non-C#-user point of view, the main reason people possibly dislike Mono (the reason I dislike Mono, and my view wont be alone) ist that by using Mono and C#, you enrich an ecosystem that "belongs" to Microsoft, like ObjC "belongs" to Apple. You have a foe, and instead of using a language that originates in your ecosystem, and writing a library that benefits your ecosystem, you'd write in your foe's language and your lib would benefit your foe's ecosystem.
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FC
--
During times of Universal Deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act
Durante épocas de Engaño Universal, decir la verdad se convierte en un Acto Revolucionario
- George Orwell

[Casper Bang]

Luckily Mono will go down sooner rather than later, together with its sponsor, SUSE, although it remains to be seen if Id de Icaza will go down with it, too.

Incorrect... again. *sigh* SUSE got sold to The Attachmate Group and closed down Mono sponsorship last year. Miguel de Igaza formed Xamarin and formed a partnership agreement with Attachmate, where Xamarin was granted all associated IP rights while Attachmate's was promised support to existing customers from Xamarin.

[Juan Marín Otero]

I've been developing for over a decade, and had the "privilege" of working on .NET for 2-3 years exclusively. I hated it and couldn't wait to get back to Java. I for one value the freedom of choice that the Java ecosystem offers, and disagree with the concept that there is too much freedom. There is never too much freedom. Can it be misused? Sure. But the rich ecosystem that the Java platform is offering these days is unmatched. As an open source developer I couldn't value this enough.  

C# is very nice as a language, it feels more evolved than Java in some aspects, though the differences are not as great for most common tasks. The Java platform already offers language options that complement Java and extend the capabilities of the platform to whichever field you are interested in. I'm learning Scala and it's all Dick's fault :)

Being an open source advocate, I did try Mono back in the day and consider it a great technical achievement, but it defeats the purpose for the reasons that others have laid out here. It is always going to be playing catch up, and there is the sense that the interoperability story will be as good as Microsoft feels it wants it to be. .NET is too tightly controlled by one corporation, so no thank you.

On the topic of developers, and I'm sure nobody in this list applies to this concept, I found myself in dismay when working with .NET developers (not all, but a scary high percentage). They knew how to use Visual Studio very well, but basic programming concepts, knowledge of patterns, even object orientation were completely absent. They could whip out ASP.NET pages very fast, but the scalability and maintenance of those systems was a nightmare. I think Microsoft has succeeded in commoditizing a large sector of the development space, by dumbing it down (the Visual Basic crowd that transitioned to VB.NET, what a disaster). Yes, there are power users, but the masses must be avoided like a zombie crowd. I have found a similar environment in the Java corporate world, but I think it's not as bad, there are always a couple of guys that stand out and make things work. 

On top of this, .NET realistically has to be run on Windows, an operating system that has bit me in the rear end enough times in the past to make me want to run away from it like the plague. As a server side developer, there are certainly better deployment platforms, and while technically it's possible to run Mono on Linux, try convincing a Microsoft IT shop to do that.

I share the sentiment of the Java Posse. I'm not interested in .NET, I only run Windows on a VM when I need to test software for that platform, and most of the business of the company that I work for is based on the Java platform along with some C, .NET has absolutely nothing to offer for us (we produce cross platform open source geospatial server software). I realize that there might be others who want to hear more about .NET, which is fine, and thankfully there are other resources to get that information.

-- 
Juan Marín Otero
GIS Consultant

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 5:09 AM, Casper Bang <caspe...@gmail.com> wrote:

Luckily Mono will go down sooner rather than later, together with its sponsor, SUSE, although it remains to be seen if Id de Icaza will go down with it, too.

Incorrect... again. *sigh* SUSE got sold to The Attachmate Group and closed down Mono sponsorship last year. Miguel de Igaza formed Xamarin and formed a partnership agreement with Attachmate, where Xamarin was granted all associated IP rights while Attachmate's was promised support to existing customers from Xamarin.

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[Casper Bang]

I share the sentiment of the Java Posse. I'm not interested in .NET, I only run Windows on a VM when I need to test software for that platform, and most of the business of the company that I work for is based on the Java platform along with some C, .NET has absolutely nothing to offer for us (we produce cross platform open source geospatial server software). I realize that there might be others who want to hear more about .NET, which is fine, and thankfully there are other resources to get that information.

Nobody is asking to hear more about .NET though, that's not the issue at all - it's funny how things tend to warp from correcting misinformation (Mono is not deprecated, SUSE doesn't sponsor Mono and Xamarin is not going anywhere), to hating Java and now apparently wanting more .NET coverage?! If the Java Posse is not interested, then simply don't report on it - but if you do, expect to be called out on slandering and misinformation.

[Ricky Clarkson]

"[Mono] is always going to be playing catch-up" - not in all areas.  New language features are often available to end users in Mono before .NET.

[Phil Haigh]

On Wednesday, 20 June 2012 07:59:47 UTC+1, fcassia wrote:

But wait, it gets better:

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But why is his company Xamarin suddenly dropping Moonlight? de Icaza explains, "Silverlight has not gained much adoption on the web, so it did not become the must-have technology that I thought would have to become."

So he was hoping to reap the benefit of providing a cross-platform solution and it didn't pay off. He won't be the first, or the last. I didn't welcome Silverlight with open arms when it arrived - more a feeling of "not another plugin", and at the time (2007) it wasn't at all clear which way HTML5 would be going.

 

In addition, "Microsoft added artificial restrictions to Silverlight that made it useless for desktop programming."

Isn't it a wakeup call for developers to stay away from Microsoft technologies such as C#, .NET and Mono. Why to enrich the ecosystem of a company which is known for abusing its power to weaken free software?

I don't see this as a wake-up call at all, just another reminder that Microsoft can't be fully trusted to stand behind any statements it makes about long-term support for anything that isn't core to its business. And even then...

[Phil Haigh]

So are these Microsoft-announced (but not yet available) features, or Mono-only extensions? Just askin'.

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[Ricky Clarkson]

The former.

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