.NET framwork question

[Node_Pointer]

I am thinking about getting into the .net "craze". But I have some basic questions.
First, by learning .net for web development, does/can/will it take the place of dreamweaver? I mean, is there "something"(IDE) in .net that basically takes the place of dreamweaver?

Second, is .net really being used more in the field?

And third, is it really that hard to learn?(vb or c#)

 

[[H] - WRX]

1. Yes, it's called Visual Studio
2. Yes, more everyday. Java still rules though.
3. Yes, if you already know c/c++/java or basic.

 

[:LJ:]

If you don't want to shell out for Visual Studio .NET, you might want to try the downloads at http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express - they've got some good stuff there to do with .NET v2.

I agree that Java rocks, but it's just not as productive as the sheer ease of event-driven development with .NET for either web-based or Win32-based stuff. .NET's cross-platform ability is still somewhat limited, though, and I've no idea what the Mono project will do once the second version of .NET is released.

 

[Velox]

I love C# and .NET. If you know Java/C++, the learning curve is very low. If you don't want to shell out for Visual Studio, you can always go with SharpDevelop. It's a free, full-featured IDE.

 

[Staples]

If you have a good grasp of Java or C++, C# is simple to learn. I was reading a book about it but I finally and just write things as I otherwise would in Java. When something doesn't work, I just look it up. Of course the whole class infrastructure is different but it works similar to the Java "framework." The MSDN documentation in those express versions is a lot better than it is in VS v7 too so it is worth your while to download it even if you have VC# 7 like I do.

 

[SilverMK3]

How does SharpDevelop compare to Microsoft's WebMatrix (Pared-down VisualStudio)? Has anyone used both?

 

[:LJ:]

How does SharpDevelop compare to Microsoft's WebMatrix (Pared-down VisualStudio)? Has anyone used both?

I've used both, as well as Visual Studio.NET and the Studio 2005 Express tools, and I can tell you that SharpDevelop comes bottom - it's good value for money, but (last time I checked - about 3 months ago) it was flaky as hell. I'd put WebMatrix just above it, then Visual Studio.NET (because it's got Intellisense), but the Express tools are the dog's danglies for me, simply because they're slicker, and they do everything I want in the way I want it (for some things, they seem to have been looking at Eclipse and its plugins). Not to mention the fact that ASP.NET 2 has some absolutely kick-ass features (like native server controls for security and authentication).

 

[Velox]

You might want to give SharpDevelop another go. It's been pretty stable for me. But the couple of times it did go down, it brought the rest of the box with it. I use SharpDevelop on my work machine because it's running '98, and VS needs Win2k or higher. My work machine is slow as hell, but it's not exactly intended for development work either.

 

[:LJ:]

You might want to give SharpDevelop another go. It's been pretty stable for me. But the couple of times it did go down, it brought the rest of the box with it. I use SharpDevelop on my work machine because it's running '98, and VS needs Win2k or higher. My work machine is slow as hell, but it's not exactly intended for development work either.

lol....at this point, i pretty much don't care too much about ASP.NET, so it's a non-issue for me. I'm concentrating on v2, since it makes life sooo much easier, and .NET is what I do for my spare time (at work I concentrate on classic ASP for the legacy stuff and Java for new apps).

And if you're running 98, then *any* crash is likely to bring the rest of the box down with it - and it's no more than you deserve

 

[Qualm]

I've no idea what the Mono project will do once the second version of .NET is released.

Reinvent the wheel ...

One question: can I use the express downloads to develop and compile my vs.net 2003 apps? Or do you just use the help reference in the express version because it's better, and still write and compile in vs.net 2003?

- Qualm

 

[Staples]

Reinvent the wheel ...

One question: can I use the express downloads to develop and compile my vs.net 2003 apps? Or do you just use the help reference in the express version because it's better, and still write and compile in vs.net 2003?

- Qualm

I am wondering this too. I am using the documentation for VS8 Express while I am still using VS7 for development. Seems like all the functions I am looking up say they are supported in the Express framework so I kind of wonder if I should just start using this beta since it seems like it possibly supports everything I need and is a slighly nicer IDE to boot.

 

[:LJ:]

Reinvent the wheel ...

One question: can I use the express downloads to develop and compile my vs.net 2003 apps? Or do you just use the help reference in the express version because it's better, and still write and compile in vs.net 2003?

- Qualm

I did actually wonder for a while about cross-compiling using Express as the IDE and the old .NET framework for the VM, but then I came to the conclusion that it was basically pointless (for me, at least).

 

[Messy]

do yourself a favor and don't do web development the MS-way if you care about standards.
in other words, don't use the built-in controls. and for heaven's sake, turn viewstate off.

i use .Net everyday and have done web application work as well as accessible sites and i really like it, but MS has proven once again that they just don't fugging get it when it comes to standards and web work.

 

[[MS]]

do yourself a favor and don't do web development the MS-way if you care about standards.
in other words, don't use the built-in controls. and for heaven's sake, turn viewstate off.

i use .Net everyday and have done web application work as well as accessible sites and i really like it, but MS has proven once again that they just don't fugging get it when it comes to standards and web work.

While the 1.x framework didn't support the newest standards that were about to come out at the time, it was stated a while back that the 2.x framework would bring web control output up to the new XHTML recommendation.

Your comment about my group not caring is unfounded.

The bulk of the development on the 1.x framework was done in the 1998-1999 timeframe; XHTML 1.0 didn’t exist. HTML 4.01 was even changing during that period. VS.NET 2002 stabilized for beta in June of 2000, and had been in the works since 1997. There are many standards in play with the VS environment, and if we always waited for the completion of an upcoming standard\recommendations, the product would never have made it to market. During the 2000 – 2001 timeframe there were constant decisions to be made about whether to delay product release to incorporate some new feature, additional work. In many cases the product was delayed, in other cases, it was not. In each case, the decision is based on what seems best for the customer.

The W3C was working on revisions to XHTML that weren’t published till 6 months after the release of the 1.0 framework. While I can’t speak for the ASP.NET team, my guess would be that delaying the whole product cycle to wait for the new recommendation would mean a delay of at least 12 months. How many of our customers would have been happy with that? At some point you have to say “no” to feature creep and ship the product. Those extra things can be considered for the next release, as can be seen with the 2.0 framework in the beta.

edit: If that came across as a little harsh, I apologize. It’s just that for most of my time at Microsoft I was working on a standards based project (Jscript) and much of the time I spent on the Jscript.NET project was going over the ECMAScript 3.0 spec, the CLI spec, the CLS spec, and getting feedback from the ECMAScript working group on proposed changes; then trying to ensure that the language and compiled output was compliant with all of them. So when someone claims that my group doesn’t care about standards, I’m absolutely appalled. I can’t speak for Microsoft as a whole, and have never worked in other divisions, but I know for a fact that here in developer division published specs are not taken lightly.

 

[:LJ:]

....snipped for brevity....

Well said...too many people don't get it where commercial products are concerned. I have to say, I've not been a great fan of .NET in the past, mostly because of the high costs involved in setting up a decent development environment. However, .NET 2 has changed my mind, in conjunction with the Express tools. Even in beta (and there is still some functionality missing), it's stable enough to develop on fairly reliably, and it's doing a pretty good job of pulling me away from Java....out of curiosity, do you know of any decent object relational frameworks for .NET? In particular, one which doesn't rely on an implementation of Yukon?

 

[Messy]

MS, not harsh at all. i appreciate some internal comments and perspective.

if i'm wrong, then i can take my beating.

i've never been a fan of far-reaching IDE's though and prefer to be more low-level based. i would think that if emerging standards was a known concern, then some plug-in architecture or update would be realesed to address this instead of waiting for a monolithic update which updates far more than just that simple issue.

i personally use a library of controls a good friend ported over from java Struts which i have then 'fleshed-out' for production usage.

from an end-user perspective, i've always felt that Microsoft has spent more time addressing less experienced developers and making toys for them without being more concerned about larger logical frameworks to help enable better operations and development in the enterprise.
i can see why this would occur from a money and recruiting perspective though - get those young developers hooked! and MS is a business afterall so i don't fault them for that at all. - but that's alot of where my gripes stem from.

oh yeah, i forgot - i wasn't saying your group didn't care, i said they didn't get it. two different things.
the Visual Interdev generation was horrid for web dev, and i still think that VS.Net is abominable for web dev.
i still do all my front-end stuff in homesite and have for years.
heck, for a while i was doing my backend with homesite too and using nAnt to compile.
presently i'm using beta 1 of SharpDevelop for backend work.

 

[Qualm]

Well, from my perspective:

I don't develop for the web. I develop windows forms apps for my 45 or so users mainly, and occasionally for my company's clients (which I do in Delphi anyway, because I can generate a stand-alone .exe and not have to worry or care what might be missing, like the whole entire .net framework, on the client end).

I also don't develop full time - only about 30% of my time is programming, the rest is network administration, project management, and all the other things that come with being a one-man department. And even that 30% is spread over Foxpro, Access, Delphi, and VB.NET - although VB.NET is most of it.

So I personally need a hold-my-hand IDE to a certain degree, I'm more productive with an IDE like VS than I would be with lower level tools (say, writing C# in notepad and compiling it from the command line.)

I just wish the help was better - I find it much more efficient to punch a few words into Google than I do to go fishing in the VS help - which is why I'm interested in the Express downloads

- Qualm

 

[[MS]]

out of curiosity, do you know of any decent object relational frameworks for .NET? In particular, one which doesn't rely on an implementation of Yukon?

Like some equivalent of ADO?

To tell the truth I seldom have need of anything outside the data namespace in the framework. What is it that you’re looking to accomplish? While i'm no expert in the area, I might be able to make a suggestion.

 

[[MS]]

oh yeah, i forgot - i wasn't saying your group didn't care, i said they didn't get it. two different things.
the Visual Interdev generation was horrid for web dev, and i still think that VS.Net is abominable for web dev.

Might reply in full in the morning, but a quick reply to this part for now...

Interdev? You'd have to admit that that's a pretty old program, from around the 96-98 era. I've not used it, but I can imagine that standards were as much a factor since it was time of the browser wars when everyone was competing to be the standard. Heck, the W3C wasn't even formed until the end of '94 and their HTML 3.2 recommendations wasn't finalized till 97. So, while I'll admit that you may be right about Interdev (as I haven't used it), you'd have to admit that for the time period, there probably wasn't much that could be done.

A similar scenario is the VC6 compiler. By today's standards it's far from compliant. A more fair comparison would be recent versions (VC 2003 or 2002) compared to today's standards, and in that respect they fare pretty well.

I might have to agree that the time span between VS6 and VS7 was too long, though knowing the other side and the major changes in development tools for .NET, I understand the long time span. Of course, then there was VS2002, then 2003, and the beta carries the name 2005. Hopefully we won’t have more than 2 years between releases from now on, otherwise it can start to hurt our customers. Of course, many cases, keeping tools up to date isn’t a high priority and can cause more work than it saves.

 

[:LJ:]

Like some equivalent of ADO?

To tell the truth I seldom have need of anything outside the data namespace in the framework. What is it that you’re looking to accomplish? While i'm no expert in the area, I might be able to make a suggestion.

I'm looking for a framework like Hibernate which will allow me to avoid the hassle of connecting to the database, creating commands, datareaders etc and just let me store an object (along with all of its children) in a database....preferably, it would be platform-agnostic, but that's not a requirement, just a nice-to-have.http://www.hibernate.org

 

[Messy]

MS,
i don't expect or even mean full releases - i mean library updates which fill in gaps left behind for whatever business reason.
specifically, it would have been easy to release some sort of update to the framework to target the controls to get them up to standards.

while the xhtml standards may not have been solidified at the time of writing, they are solid now and have been for a while. and by the time Whidbey comes out, they will have been out for quite a few years. that's a long time to leave developers hanging.

 

[enkafan]

I'm looking for a framework like Hibernate which will allow me to avoid the hassle of connecting to the database, creating commands, datareaders etc and just let me store an object (along with all of its children) in a database....preferably, it would be platform-agnostic, but that's not a requirement, just a nice-to-have.http://www.hibernate.org

Hmmmm, like LLBLGen ?

 

[[MS]]

Messy:

You have good questions, but with regard to interim releases, there are several concerns which have to be considered. I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen, just that it’s more complicated than that.

Just for starters, there is backwards compatibility. Because of how ASP.NET works, a new target schema could break existing apps. This is a big concern because it would cause customers real problems, and would force us to maintain the new version and old version as independent branches. To explain, web controls render differently depending on the features supported by the client (based on the bits of info in the http request headers). Thus a page might render to table based layout on older browsers and use CSS on new ones. Adding the new XHTML output schema would affect existing applications unless it was released as a new version of the framework.

Ideally such changes would have made it into v1.1 (2003), but my guess is that the changes were too extensive to be made within that timeframe. Much of time for the 2003 cycle were spent taking security training, doing additional threat modeling and making security related design changes (this was around the time Microsoft committed to putting more resources into security). Those took precedence over new feature work and with ASP.NET I’m sure that took a fair amount of time because of the type of component it is. The amount of time for feature work for many teams was only a couple weeks. Thus, 2003 was a point release (VS 7.1, NDP 1.1), and was a $20 upgrade to users of 2002.

So that’s why it makes sense to release feature improvements with new versions of the framework, and likely why it wasn’t in 2003. So why aren’t there more point releases? Like a 1.2 version of the framework? For that you have to consider Microsoft’s commitment to sustaining its products. It used to be a 7 year support cycle, what is it now, 10 years? The costs of maintaining a product for that length of time are considerable, in both time and costs, and it grows with each source tree branch that is released. Since we have a finite work force, increasing the number of branches active at a time decreases the amount of feature work we can do in new releases.

So why don’t we release more builds that are “as is” and unsupported? This is one of things improving lately. Even before the public beta’s certain MSDN subscribers were allowed access to earlier builds.

So there’re always other things to consider. Such discussions are common place in the VS\NDP shiproom, (where representatives of each team get together and discuss these exact things). Like I said before there are alternate paths to take, but in the end a decision has to be made based on the information at hand as to how to best serve our customer base. In some cases these decisions can change over time, and in other cases changing them can cause more harm than good.

 

[Messy]

i don't mean to be too judgemental, but the benefits of OO and polymorphism and overriding, etc are that you should be able to release newer 'guts' of some small piece like the controls and leave the same interfaces intact and not break anything backwards.

i know it _can_ be done. apparently it wasn't done? while i'm not saying it's a small task, i sounds like it was not architected out properly to understand newer specifications - which is just short-sighted.
if you think about it, it supports html 3.2 and 4.0(1), why is it such a massive deal to then extend that to xhtml?

personally i'd fire myself for that lack of design consideration. -because even if xhtml 1.0 was not 100% solidified at the time, it was not non-existent and the historical trend of ever-improving and changing specifications was certainly there.

 

[enkafan]

Microsoft couldn't just release new versions of the controls without a lot of people getting their panties in a wad about the HTML being output changing. It really shouldn't break anything, but some people would manage to bitch and moan. And honestly, I bet more people would be affected by the XHTML being output than even care that you can't get XHTML compliant code out of ASP.NET.

You might find this interesting Messy: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

 

[Messy]

good article. i'm about halfway through it now. i've read about the specail scenarios in the OS made to handle developer's bad decisions. really Ms should insist on 3rd party programs being made properly. when people say "Windows crashes alot" - it's usually not the OS, it's all those stupid little programs people riddle their machine with. i've personally always had stability with Windows OS's.

i agree with you about the number of people complaining about xhtml vs not for different reasons.
i happen to want (demand?) totalitarian control over my output because i know what i'm doing. i could give a rat's ass about the output being different for different browsers. it sounds nice warm and fuzzy, but in real production practice, i think it stinks. it's a support nightmare imo. it's also a sort of hand-holder, which is the type of thing i can't stand.
The number of times i've been tripped up by 'helpful' features when programming is more than i wish to recall. i expect a certain return and have every logical reson to expect a certain return, but MS decided to make it return differently to help out less experienced programmers. so annoying.
it's the wrong type of help. There is no substitute for education.

 

[aaron]

I have done a lot of searching, and have come to the conclusion that nothing (currently) rivals well made .net based solutions.

If you think any different, you haven't spent enough time with it.

Mono is still very young. I have a lot of hope for that project after version 3.0+, but currently it doesn't support enough of the framework to be worth putting your time into.

Microsoft is not going to let down their developers; we are their livelyhood, and the only things keeping Linux off of the mainstream desktop. They know us, they love us, and it's a beautiful thing.

_________________________________________________
Senior .Net Developer / Systems Architect
Verizon IT - Creative Development

 

[Staples]

I have a question about Mono. MS always says .net is cross platform but I always said yeah right, so is MFC since it runs on any Windows 32bit system. I don't think MS has a problem with people making cross language compilers for .net but I wonder about Mono. Did MS ever intend .net to be really cross platform? Or do they hate the idea of Mono runing .net on unix? I want to know if they are friendly to the development of Mono and it is what they hoped would happen with .net or do they see it as a rip off of their work and never intended it to be "cross platform." I'd assume the later but I guess they can't do enough in court to stop development of it.

 

[Qualm]

Or do they hate the idea of Mono runing .net on unix?

What Microsoft says publicly about Mono and what they say privately are likely to be two different things.

One of the effects of .NET, which has been neatly torpedoed by Mono (for now), was that everyone in the application development chain, from producer of .NET code to consumer of .NET apps, was comfortably (from Microsoft's perspective) locked into using Microsoft operating systems. Cross-platform lip service notwithstanding, you couldn't really argue about that, until Mono.

What you could argue is to what degree .NET was/is a deliberate architecture-locking strategic effort by Microsoft. Personally I don't care about that debate. But I doubt very much whether Microsoft is *privately* happy about Mono.

p.s. if Microsoft had *wanted* a cross-platform development architecture, they could have gotten behind Java, which was already years old, rather than re-invented Java (C#). They didn't. That should answer your question.

- Qualm

 

[:LJ:]

Hmmm....Microsoft seems to be speaking with a forked tongue. On the one hand, you have Steve Ballmer's supposed comment of "that's what lawyers are for" when asked what MS would do about Mono if it grew in terms of capability and popularity.

On the other hand, you have this which suggests that it was going to go for a Linux .NET port (admittedly it's 4 years old - does anyone else have more up-to-date information on this?).

Personally, I can't see the benefits in going to all the trouble of creating an ECMA standard for the CLI and C# in particular if you're only going to go for a limited server market. I think they may be aiming at true cross-platform portability, but Mono's trumped them a little and that's probably what they're pissed at, if anything.

 

[[MS]]

Staples:
The specifications relating to .NET and C# were all published and are open for anyone to implement.

The framework allows multiple languages to interact, and to generate programs which can be run on different platforms. Since Microsoft owns the Windows platform, versions were implemented for those OSes. It doesn’t make much sense to spend Microsoft’s programming resources on other platforms, but with the specs published anyone is able to create versions for other platforms (like MONO). Clearly, if the intention was to prevent others from implementing the CLI (the heart of the .NET Framework), then those specs wouldn’t be available and open to independent implementation.

Qualm:
>What Microsoft says publicly about Mono and what they say privately are likely to be two different things.

Odd. I don’t see this. Can you give examples?

>One of the effects of .NET, which has been neatly torpedoed by Mono (for now), was that
>everyone in the application development chain, from producer of .NET code to consumer of
>.NET apps, was comfortably (from Microsoft's perspective) locked into using Microsoft operating >systems. Cross-platform lip service notwithstanding, you couldn't really argue about that, until >Mono.

What you say makes no sense at all, no offense. We openly published the specs to help enable independent implementations. This is noted on both the MSDN site and on the MONO site. I have no idea where you get the impression that they “torpedoed” .NET, since it was Microsoft that decided to publish the information to allow MONO. If you don’t believe me, you can read it directly from the MONO guys:

http://www.mono-project.com/about/index.html

Mono's .NET implementation is based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Infrastructure.

http://www.mono-project.com/about/faq.html#msft

Question 38: Is Microsoft helping Novell with this project?
There is no high level communication between Novell and Microsoft at this point, but engineers who work on .NET or the ECMA groups have been very friendly, and very nice to answer our questions, or clarify part of the specification for us.
Microsoft is interested in other implementations of .NET and are willing to help make the ECMA spec more accurate for this purpose.
Novell participates in the ECMA committee meetings for C# and the CLI.

As for your comment about Java…
Would it really have been wise to encourage a development story that could hurt us and our customers? Sun controls Java (or at least they used to, I haven’t followed it lately), and thus could block\delay\remove features or make other changes without having any accountability to Microsoft. This would leave Microsoft and our developer story at the mercy of another company. That could potentially be devastating for Windows developers, end users, and Microsoft as a whole. I’m not saying that something would happen, but something could happen. That’s just one reason.

There are things that simply cannot be done in Java and so in some respects it would also be limiting. An example is the CAS system in .NET. There isn’t really an equivalent for Java. What about interoperability with other languages? There are many languages out there… I don’t want to turn this into a rant about one language or another, but I do want to illustrate the point that there are good reasons for the current approach.


LJ:
I Googled your reference and came up with this: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7554

What are the implications behind Microsoft's support for Mono, and what are the repercussions for free software?
...
A statement attributed to Steve Ballmer at a party a few years ago would support this possibility. To paraphrase, when asked about Mono, he shrugged it off with a statement alluding to the fact if Mono got too popular, that's what lawyers are for. Mind you this is friend-of-a-friend kind of hearsay, but it is worth noting regardless.

So someone from linux journal is paraphrasing that someone once heard Steve utter a statement at a party. Um… ok. I don’t think that really deserves a response, so I’ll just more on.

I don’t know what happened with any prior agreement with Corel. There was a enducational port of the CLI and source code released for freebsd, but I don’t believe that anything for .NET was ever release for Linux by Microsoft.

>Personally, I can't see the benefits in going to all the trouble of creating an ECMA standard for
>the CLI and C# in particular if you're only going to go for a limited server market. I think they
>may be aiming at true cross-platform portability, but Mono's trumped them a little and that's
>probably what they're pissed at, if anything.

The reason to do the work to publish and help maintain the specs is so that projects like mono can spring up to provide compatibility for non MS platforms. I fail to see how Mono has trumped anything, they’re doing exactly what everyone thought would happen. Perhaps if you explain a little more where you’re coming from, I could better understand what you meant with the statement.

 

[Qualm]

I have no idea where you get the impression that they “torpedoed” .NET

Read more carefully - I said that one of the effects of .NET was (for now) torpedoed by Mono - that being the requirement that if you want to develop .NET apps you had to do it (pre-mono) on a Microsoft OS. I made no claim that this was an intention of the Mono project, and furthermore I specifically said I am not in the least bit interested in the debate (which mainly raged early on and has died down since) regarding whether or not .NET was/is a strategic effort by Microsoft to "lock" people into Microsoft operating systems, by any means available.

As for your comment about Java…
Would it really have been wise to encourage a development story that could hurt us and our customers? Sun controls Java (or at least they used to, I haven’t followed it lately), and thus could block\delay\remove features or make other changes without having any accountability to Microsoft. This would leave Microsoft and our developer story at the mercy of another company. That could potentially be devastating for Windows developers, end users, and Microsoft as a whole. I’m not saying that something would happen, but something could happen. That’s just one reason.

All perfectly plausible, and reasonable, and even, from Microsoft's perspective, technically true. But those of us with memories that go back that far (I wrote an article for the Japanese magazine Software Development about the first Java conference in NYC, 1996) remember a darker, more complicated and contentious history of Microsoft's involvement in Java.

- Qualm

 

[aaron]

If they wanted to lock developers into using the windows platform to run .net applications, they would not have created and released a standard.

The only reason I can think of that anyone at Microsoft may be unhappy about the mono project's implementation of the .Net framework is that they are creating their own class libraries (non 1.* framework [GTK for example]) that will not compile on windows. Any application using these libraries efectively becomes linux only, and the cross platform value is lost.

I applaud you for being so objective MS. I have to admit I got a little mad reading this thread... It's not easy being a microsoft fan anymore.

 

[Qualm]

Qualm:
>What Microsoft says publicly about Mono and what they say privately are likely to be two different things.

Odd. I don’t see this. Can you give examples?

Not specifically about Mono. I haven't looked though, so it might or might not be out there. Note that I didn't say ARE two different things, I said are LIKELY to be two different things. That's a natural consequence of any large company's PR-speak-for-public-consumption, but I think most industry cognoscenti, even Microsoft fans (which, believe it not, I am), can recall many, many examples of Microsoft's rather fantastical PR rhetoric.

Everyone is clear that Mono is open source, I think ...

From the Mono-project website (http://www.mono-project.com/about/index.html):

What is Mono?™

Mono is a comprehensive open source development platform based on the .NET framework that allows IT and ISV developers to build Linux and cross-platform applications with unprecedented productivity.

From a report on Silicon.com today (http://hardware.silicon.com/servers/0,39024647,39122181,00.htm):

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has criticised the lack of innovation in open source software and accused the community of merely trying to "clone" commercial software.
...
Where's the technology innovation going to happen? Technology innovation has happened much more from commercial companies than open source. Open source has just been trying to do clones of commercial software. That's all Linux is – a clone of Unix," he said.

Ballmer said that with commercial software, businesses are guaranteed a "clear chain of responsibility" with regards to support and intellectual property. "Who's going to stand up and stand behind open source? No such clear line of responsibility exists.

Maybe he was thinking "besides Mono of course" and just neglected to say it loud

- Qualm

 

[[MS]]

Read more carefully - I said that one of the effects of .NET was (for now) torpedoed by Mono - that being the requirement that if you want to develop .NET apps you had to do it (pre-mono) on a Microsoft OS. I made no claim that this was an intention of the Mono project, and furthermore I specifically said I am not in the least bit interested in the debate (which mainly raged early on and has died down since) regarding whether or not .NET was/is a strategic effort by Microsoft to "lock" people into Microsoft operating systems, by any means available.

Even with the qualifier you reiterate, the statement is completely incorrect. It was\is Microsoft that published the specifications in the first place, and independent implementations were expected. If we didn’t want anyone else creating a C# compiler, then the C# language wouldn’t be the open standard it is today. We do hope to always have the best tools, but to hope that we wouldn’t have competition would just be naive. I’ll leave it at that since you say you’re not interested in arguing the point.

Edit: (to address the post just above this one)
Not to be mean, but that last one brought a smile to my face

You quote the Mono summary describing it as an implementation of .NET for the Linux platform.
You then post a link to Ballmer saying that the open source community has been trying to produce open source versions of commercial software.

You then indicate that the two are in conflict and that Ballmer must have been wrong, at least in regard to Mono. This just makes me wonder how you could ever come to such a conclusion based on the two examples given. To me they seem to indicate the exact opposite. Oh well.

I’m not saying that what Ballmer said is always the case. I would agree that there is a tendency for OSS projects to spring up to offer alternatives to many CSS products. I’d also say that there are many counterexamples, but the one you make try to point out is really supporting your point.

Oh well. It’s been a fun conversation at least.

 

[Qualm]

but the one you make try to point out is really supporting your point.

No, I think you missed my point.

Which is that to publicly ream open source software as bad, which Microsoft (Ballmer and others) has been doing lately in a strategic PR campaign, while at the same time supporting (as you pointed out) a prominent open source project, which happens to exactly fit Ballmer's label of trying to clone a commercial software, is quite an amusing bit of ironic hypocrisy.

- Qualm

 

[:LJ:]

Oh well. It’s been a fun conversation at least.

Which, really, is the point of all this

 

[Velox]

No, I think you missed my point.

Which is that to publicly ream open source software as bad, which Microsoft (Ballmer and others) has been doing lately in a strategic PR campaign, while at the same time supporting (as you pointed out) a prominent open source project, which happens to exactly fit Ballmer's label of trying to clone a commercial software, is quite an amusing bit of ironic hypocrisy.

- Qualm

Supporting and 'not actively opposing' are two different things. Microsoft is not exactly supporting the mono project. Sure, they're answering questions to help clarify the CLI specifications, but it's not like Microsoft is offering source code, or sending developers to help out on the project, or donating money to the project or anything. Think of it this way; Microsoft isn't supporting the mono project, it's supporting the CLI.

 

[Qualm]

Think of it this way; Microsoft isn't supporting the mono project, it's supporting the CLI.

So you're saying maybe, in the mind of at least some people at Microsoft, supporting the CLI trumps a strategic PR campaign (open source costs jobs! gives away our national competitive edge! lamely copies real technical innovation!) currently being waged by high level Microsoft executives? I wonder ...

Personally I have no problem liking Microsoft products (and I happen to really like VB.NET), and yet still be amused and occasionally irked by the contradictions and occasional outright hypocrisy in some of it's public rhetoric.

THAT'S why I said "What Microsoft says publicly about Mono and what they say privately are likely to be two different things". Simply because you are unlikely to ever get a completely consistent (meaning consistent in what Microsoft says publicly and actually thinks privately), forthright, 100% complete and true statement of Microsoft's position on something like the Mono project.

- Qualm

 

[[MS]]

No, I think you missed my point.

Which is that to publicly ream open source software as bad, which Microsoft (Ballmer and others) has been doing lately in a strategic PR campaign, while at the same time supporting (as you pointed out) a prominent open source project, which happens to exactly fit Ballmer's label of trying to clone a commercial software, is quite an amusing bit of ironic hypocrisy.

- Qualm

I don’t see any irony whatsoever, and your statements perplex me. Ballmer stated that OSS has a tendency to create clones of CSS projects. (As I noted before this is a gross oversimplification, with many counter examples.) This is probably one of the reasons an independent implementation was expected when the specs for the CLI and C# were published and made into open standards.

Second, while we did release the source code for the CLI, it was for educational purposes only. Mono wanted a commercially usable one so hey banned project contributors from looking at our source code. Thus, while we have encouraged independent implementations, and enabled the whole thing to begin with, direct help to the Mono project has been limited to answering some questions and clarifying parts of the published specs that weren’t understand. In the end, though Mono is based upon .NET, it’s as implementation of the open specs and thus I wouldn’t consider it a “clone”. IMHO that title would apply to things like adding features to Gimp to reproduce exact functionality in Photoshop (since these are not standards based features).

Is it hypocritical to encourage independent implementations of the CLI? I don’t think so.
Is it hypocritical to say that OSS often clones CSS products? While not always the case, and while sometimes the opposite is true, I don’t thing it’s hypocritical to say.