And all the proponents of Mono and C# can say in its defense is that “they’re ECMA/ISO standards!” To which I say: Since when was standardization synonymous with indemnification? In fact, Mono is only legally applied to SuSE thanks to that deal with Novell. And anyone who pays attention to Microsoft’s history (Apparently everyone BUT the Mono proponents.) believes that Mono is far from safe, intellectually, for Linux. It should be obvious to anyone how easily Microsoft could pull the rug out from the happy place of all those who think Mono is safe. The worst that could happen if Microsoft patent trolls Mono is (*Gasp!*) losing the standard status on .NET. I imagine by the time MS would be ready to pull the trolling they would be prepared to lose the standard. No skin off their back, they never respected standards, anyway. Microsoft has virtually nothing, nil, to lose by pulling an SCO on Mono.

Do not feed me the so-called “community promise,” that’s pure public relations on the part of Microsoft. Big money says that Microsoft has no intention of honoring that “promise” on the true long-term.

In my head, a true open standard is one that is designed and maintained equally by more than two groups. .NET and C# do not meet this criteria. Nor does OOXML (And the only reason OOXML became an ISO standard was through bribes and committee stacking. Google it.)

I see no technical problems with Mono, though I never liked .NET in any implementation, but one would have to be quite naive or forgiving to blindly trust Mono like its proponents do. Mono looks to me as a big patent bomb that Microsoft nurtured indirectly. Hell, look at the asshole who CREATED Mono: Miguel de Icaza, the single biggest Microsoft ass-kisser in the FOSS movement (Calling OOXML a “superb” standard, almost having a veritable hard-on about the .NET CLI, and, yes, tryign real hard to even get a job at Microsoft instead of Novell at one point.). There’s conspiracy theories akimbo about whose employ de Icaza is really in.

In fact, Miguel tried and failed to convince the rest of his GNOME team to convert GNOME to a Mono-based DE. From what I heard, he got completely shut out with that idea.

Fortunately, I switched to KDE. Qt is more than powerful enough to actually cover anything Mono could try to do on a technical level with GNOME.

http://blogs.msdn.com/dsyme/archive/2008/07/14/1-9-4-19-release.aspx
“F# On Mono

* The Mono 2.0 profile for F# is now used. On Mono the F# compiler is now invoked using mono bin\fscp.exe. See the notes above for details of this. NOTE: compiler startup times may be reduced on Mono because the Mono 1.9 doesn’t support ‘Ahead of Time Compilation’ for its 2.0 profile. This won’t normally be a problem if you’re only using F# Interactive (fsi.exe). If it is a problem then see the instructions above for using the .NET 1.x profile compiler. ”

In fact MSFT actively tests the F# compiler and libraries against Mono.

Unfortunately, you seem to have comprehension issues as well. I’m not recommending anything – and unlike you two, I’m not stuffing my choices down someone elses throat. I’m talking about *my* preferences. Not what should be on the default cd, used by someone else, blah blah blah.

> If we are going down the route of which operating systems are better, we might as well just use MacOS and forget about Linux. You could say the same about Linux, ie, paraphrasing you “Linux is, to be polite, not that great”.

You had a comprehension issue there so this is of course irrelevant.

> So what we have here is someone that has not made enough of a contribution, that has not devoted the hours, that has no experience writing medium scale applications, maintaining them and fixing them for end users but has strong opinions as to what those that actually *know what they are doing* should use.

No, actually, due you your comprehension issues, again, I don’t have a “strong opinion” as to what someone else should be using. Also, while we’re waving credos about, whats yours?

> Like they were saying on reddit, what we have here are armchair generals.

Wow! You’re sounding like you did a ton of work! Actually, what -did- you do? As far as I know, Andy != David the founder of Gnome DO and in my opinion, the only good Mono-powered linux app.

> I am also curious Vadim, how is C# clean? Did you contact a patent lawyer and he performed a review with you? Or it is just because it might be inconvenient for you to admit that C# is on the same boat as the VM and the core class libraries (All three part of ECMA).

The syntax definition of C# is not as far as I’m aware and the ECMA states. In fact it’s the only thing that pro-mono purists are waving about as the clean part, failing to mention what’s not (CLI, .NET libraries).

Have a look for yourself: http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-334.htm

It specifies:
[...]
* The syntax and constraints of the C# language;
[...]

This International Standard does not specify:
* The mechanism by which C# programs are transformed for use by a data-processing system;
* The mechanism by which C# applications are invoked for use by a data-processing system;
* The mechanism by which input data are transformed for use by a C# application;
* The mechanism by which output data are transformed after being produced by a C# application;
* The size or complexity of a program and its data that will exceed the capacity of any specific data-processing system or the capacity of a particular processor;
* All minimal requirements of a data-processing system that is capable of supporting a conforming implementation.

The only inconvenience is the controversy regarding Mono and thus its existence – as it’s obviously taking time, and credit (”lol, you guys copied .NET to Linux. How increative”).

We can argue that mono developers are “missing the point” and that the real issue is “not technical”. But at some point the discussion had better get technical. Consumers, are going to use what works.

>>Pressure Novell and Microsoft (as some of you work in both the companies) to

A written statement form MS would be great, but you might as well pressure Norway to issue a statement on mono. Microsoft has demonstrated no interest in favor, or against, mono. Not a single ms link offers any support for it. And the very few MSDN threads that actually reference mono, are fed by users.

* If Microsoft perceives some potential benefit, it will issue the statement you’re describing. Otherwise it won’t.
* If Microsoft can leverage mono to their advantage, it will.
* If google can leverage mono to their advantage it will.
* If I can leverage mono to my advantage, I will.

If we are going down the route of which operating systems are better, we might as well just use MacOS and forget about Linux. You could say the same about Linux, ie, paraphrasing you “Linux is, to be polite, not that great”.

So what we have here is someone that has not made enough of a contribution, that has not devoted the hours, that has no experience writing medium scale applications, maintaining them and fixing them for end users but has strong opinions as to what those that actually *know what they are doing* should use.

Like they were saying on reddit, what we have here are armchair generals.

I am also curious Vadim, how is C# clean? Did you contact a patent lawyer and he performed a review with you? Or it is just because it might be inconvenient for you to admit that C# is on the same boat as the VM and the core class libraries (All three part of ECMA).

Also I should note that the post you cite has been answered not only by me, but from a bunch of other people. That’s to say it’s not that it the absolute truth (although it may contain some, of course).

Lastly I believe your response to Vadim where a bit emotional. That’s understandable but it doesn’t help the points you’re trying to make.