Mono Survey
Thursday, October 07 2004
Jim Blizzard did a little mono survey over on his blog and I posted my comments there but I wanted to also put them up here:
1) Is Mono...
A) Good for developers? - Personally I think it is awesome.
2) Is Mono...
A) Good for Microsoft? - I guess you can see downsides for Microsoft, but in the long run it might show that MS is finally ready to play nice.
3) Do you think Mono infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property rights for .NET?
A) Not a problem. - Microsoft put out the specs and even created a sample implementation that runs on the Mac.. how would it possibly infringe.
4) What do you think about the viability of a Mono-based solution?
B) Ready today (or soon) for prime time. - They have shown ASP.NET apps running successfully, good windows apps might be a little farther away.
5) Do you see Mono becoming a viable web application environment?
C) Already there. - There are apps out there running, it might not hit enterprise but in a PHP kind of way it is there.
6) Do you see Mono becoming a viable desktop application environment?
B) Getting there fast. - I think it could in the future, needs a little more work. Implementing Windows Forms will be a big move in the right direction.
7) Do you think Mono is a threat to the Microsoft Windows platform?
A) No. - If all you guys can come up with is custom .NET apps as your value added then you are in big trouble. The Windows platform is based on much more than just platform lock-in. There are tons of *nix and Java apps, tons of Mac apps, but everyone uses Windows.
8) Will Mono provide "write once/run anywhere" ability (as in a run on Mono/Microsoft .Net without re-compiling)?
A) Never. - Has anyone?
9) Do you use Mono for production applications?
B) No. - No, but I am looking into it.
10) Any other comments?
I think Microsoft has won alot of goodwill in the development community, and the quickest way to trash all of that would be to attack Mono. (Or to attack FireFox, which they are already doing). The goal should be to beat those applications with better software, not legal moves and cheap shots. (Like MSDN working like crap in FireFox)
Just my thoughts
-James
Comments
- #1 Nathan Nutter on 10.07.2004 at 4:10 AM
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These seem like reasonable answers; anyways, was interesting to read your answers.
- #2 Pritam Pal on 10.07.2004 at 5:57 AM
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Nice touch. I do not think it will be long before Mono catches with Windows Apps.
- #3 Ian Griffiths on 10.07.2004 at 12:46 PM
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I'm not sure the answer to 3) is actually all that clear cut.
Where there is probably no problem about the bits that Microsoft put it in the spec and released for other platforms, those parts are only a subset of the .NET Framework.
In particular, those bits don't include ADO.NET, ASP.NET or Windows Forms.
Mono is trying to implement all of these, as well as the stuff in the specs.
Presumably Microsoft chose to leave these out of the specs for a reason. Possibly because they wanted to keep control over those parts? - #4 James Avery on 10.07.2004 at 2:13 PM
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That's a good point Ian. I think it comes down to the fact of whether Microsoft was serious when they said other people could implement the .NET framework on other platforms... of if it was just marketing.
I don't think Microsoft has patented any of the ideas in those frameworks, but if they did they could probably go after Mono.
-James - #5 JReidy on 12.18.2004 at 1:18 PM
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Re: 8,
Perhaps not all mono apps run the same in windows, but I have read (in someone's blogs) that a range of tested .NET apps run perfectly in mono.
Just heresay on my part, but thought it worth mentioning. Interesting article! - #6 daniele on 1.03.2005 at 5:31 PM
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8) answer is very interesting, so what is for .NET?
compile everywhere microsoft support .NET? I just prefer J2EE. Or I prefer zope, or I prefer php, or I prefer C++ native code writed for an already ported library.
Compile time is not a great resource, just not as great as running time.
I would say a well writed C++ library that do not make you to code everything, with also binding for other language, and .. come on, .NET il code works well just because it was designed for i386 and works well on i386. - #7 Nick Goloborodko on 1.10.2005 at 1:19 AM
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3) I think that MS is not at all worried by mono at the moment, infact thay should be rather flattered. They pour so much cash into the marketting machine, that all of the enterprise customers are paranoid about running anything else, that has not been made in Microsoft.
Incase of mono, i think that at the moment its a really cool hobbyist type of project, and has a long long way to go before it can actually be viewed seriously in the enterprise. After all, you don't get a leading edge by using an immitation platform.
So to sum this up, i don't see MS trying to shut down mono anytime soon (or atleast before they start to loose a good proportion of enterprise customers to mono)