[Mono-list] I give up / Mac OS X PPC support

[Dan]

Here, Here Greg.  Well said!  The only thing I would add is that when you
say "It's about freedom, simple as that.", I would more specifically say
"It's about freedom of choice".

Regards,
Dan Maltes

-----Original Message-----
From: mono-list-admin@lists.ximian.com
[mailto:mono-list-admin@lists.ximian.com] On Behalf Of Gregory Junker
Sent: Monday, April 12, 2004 10:59 AM
To: Mono List
Subject: Re: [Mono-list] I give up / Mac OS X PPC support

This is a rather short-sighted viewpoint, I have to say. If you were talking
about today, Monday April 12, 2004, then ya, sure, "if the election were
today" then Windows.NET would win hands down. That's not what this project
is about however. 

I strongly disagree with the statement "if Mono PPC doesn't work right now,
today, then you should just give it up". If Mono had the same paid
development staff of the same size that Microsoft has dedicated to .NET just
on Windows, then you might have a legitimate gripe. 

I hear a lot of sour grapes here, a lot of "glass is half empty". I predict
that two or three years from now you'll look back to this time and wonder
why you were worried at all. And if you need Mono to run reliably on MacOSX
before then, well, like you said...you need to run Windows (or,
increasingly, with each passing day, Mono/Linux). 

I rarely boot back into Windows unless I have to (gaming), and then, as soon
as I am done, it's back to Linux. All of my desktops have both Fedora and
Win2K on them, and they spend 99% of their uptime in Linux.
Not because I am a religious fanatic; I didn't have a single Linux machine
in my business until about 18 months ago, and I only recently eliminated the
last Windows server from the shop. I started in .NET and C# in the second
beta version of VS.NET, and liked it a lot, but did not care to run it on
Windows servers, so until I found out about this project, and the level of
its maturity, I more or less ignored .NET completely. Now that I can run it
in a commercial-license-free environment, I am far more interested in
employing it in our projects. 

You mention beating MS at their own game; MS themselves realize the reality
of the evolutionary path: the actual OS longer will matter in a matter of a
few short years. Businesses care about what it will take to get the work
done, not how it's done, and since the movement is inexorably moving towards
"software as a service", and since .NET is a frontrunning technology towards
that end, the fact that it runs on Linux (and only gets more complete and
stable with each CVS commit) means that no longer will IT departments have
to care about what latest-and- greatest gee-whiz-bang-gizmo Microsoft puts
out and expects us to buy:
it simply won't matter. 

In other words, in a Mono-enabled .NET world, Microsoft themselves
ironically become irrelevant. That's why Mono/Linux is important in and of
itself: weaning from the dependency on a single-source vendor for what
admittedly is a desirable technology. 

And best of all, you can still use VS.NET if you wish to develop apps for
Mono/Linux (and other platforms when ready). And even that dependence is
being addressed. 

So for me, and, I would imagine, for a significant portion of those
interested in developing applications under Mono (and for Novell itself, I
believe), it's not a religious fervor that drives this, not a hatred for
Microsoft. It's just the opportunity NOT to have to rely on the whimsy of
Redmond to "take care of business", as it were. It's about freedom, simple
as that. 

For me anyway...

Greg


>         On x86 hardware, I prefer windows xp/2003. Sorry, I love *nix,
>         butlinux doesn't do much for me on x86, especially when x86/
>         windowsoffers 100% compatibility and killer dev tools.
>         Frankly, there is noreal reason to host asp.net apps under
>         apache, when my XP box doesbetter after locking it down. No
>         religion here folks, just reality.
>         
>         I appreciate the new features and the roadmap, but if all mono
>         has tooffer is x86/linux stability, then mono has only
>         succeeded in doing isproviding a 'free' implementation of
>         the .net runtime that runs on thesame commodity hardware that
>         a fully supported and commercial versionruns on.
>         
>         the same hardware. Believeit or not, most windows shops
>         adopting .NET don't care about OSlicensing costs or security. 

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