[ale] Open Source Version of .Net

[Greg]

NOTE: This is not meant in any flaming or trolling manner, however I must
throw in my 2 cents worth on this...

Have we learned nothing about dealing with Microsoft ?  I mean, the list is
long and illustrious... Sybase, Apple, IBM, Kerberos, Kodak, the many who
will pay out of their financial buttocks for the XP crapola, and now
rumblings with AOL.  Microsoft has an innate inability to collaborate with
anyone in anything like a fair relationship.  If the ECMA adopts standards
that are Microsoft "suggested" is that not giving them an "in" to what they
would like more than anything else... control over common
standards/protocols ? Can you imagine a world where TCP/IP was the
intellectual property of Mr. Gates ?... sorry Linux, I don't like you and no
license for you.

Also, .Net looks good on the surface, but currently .Net is turning into a
nightmare.  According to recent articles the Hailstorm and messenger
services have been off - line with repercussions around the world to
business that depend on those technologies.  Microsoft would not even tell
them the servers were down.  Visual Basic programmers and web developers
(myself included) were at first assured that conversion to .Net would be
painless - now Microsoft is saying that it "will involve considerable
re-programming".  The number of VB programmers is dropping like a rock.  I
looked at C# and it looks like a poor rip-off of Java... and from the MS
chat rooms it seems that it is more divisive than unifying.  The C++ folks
think that it is "too watered down" and the VB folks seem to think that it
is "too C++ like" - I mean, why not just learn C++ or Java instead ?  The
"Holy Grail" of a web application development language/framework with the
power of C++, the ease of VB or even ASP, and easily separable into distinct
layers still eludes Mr. Gates.

As for as the whole services idea goes, I am leery of putting my data on
someone else's hard drive or of having to "rent" services from a provider.
As far as the development end goes..  well, we all know the wonderful job
Microsoft does when it comes to security.  Steve Gibson's saga of dealing
with them kinda tells it all (www.grc.com). And while I don't mind someone
making $ off of open source, I would hate to see M$ do it and advertise it
as "made in Redmond".

I honestly think that the open source community needs to just ignore for the
meantime the whole .Net strategy - or at least do it (if anyone must) while
staying apart from Microsoft.  However if anyone can think of a firm that
benefited from a relationship with MS.. I would be glad to re-apprise my
position.

Greg Canter


-----Original Message-----
From:	owner-ale at ale.org [mailto:owner-ale at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
Sent:	Friday, July 06, 2001 2:44 PM
To:	ale at ale.org
Subject:	[ale] Open Source Version of .Net

Miguel de Icaza (of Gnome fame) has announced Mono, to be an open source
version of Microsoft's .Net initiative. If this comes to fruition, all
programs written to .Net specs could be interpreted by the .Net or Mono
middle layer and run on any OS. Pretty exciting stuff, if it all pans
out. Read about it here:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,44985,00.html

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