[Mono-list] .NET version 1.1 and 2.0

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello!

> I wasn't trying to say they weren't "broken", but I was trying to point out
> that it's really Microsoft's problem if they are, not other .NET
> implementation's.

You are right about that.  Mary Jo asked me about what I would like to
see in .NET, and I said `I want them to fix their broken APIs', the
quote you see is my reply to `can you expand on what you mean?' 

Speaking as a developer (not a Mono developer), I want my platform to
have good APIs, and get the broken APIs fixed. 

> > And indeed, the article is about .NET, and not 
> > about the ECMA specs.
> 
> Where are you drawing the line then? The ECMA specs are what every runtime
> needs to provide to be considered .NET standards compliant. Any other class
> libraries written outside of the ECMA BCL are proprietary, right? Whether
> John Developer writes it or Microsoft writes it certainly makes no
> difference. If John Developer makes poor design decisions or ties himself to
> a single platform using P/Invoke or COM interop, it's the same thing...
> right?

ECMA is interesting because they have a specification for the C#
language and for a runtime engine.  The specification for the runtime
engine is pretty complete, but it is a bit useless without class
libraries. 

The most interesting class libraries out there are the Microsoft ones,
because, well, they happen to be there already ;-)   That being said, I
hope that we will have many more class libraries (both in Windows and in
Linux) so that is not an issue.

But many people are using the Microsoft APIs, so it makes sense to
emulate those. 

Miguel.