Why Mono doesn't suck

http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/124/

by antileet • 17 years ago

77 83 17 years ago

www2.apebox.org

TomOfTTB4• 17 years ago

It's a good article though I'd go so far as to say the piece it responds to isn't worthy of a response. Take this quote...

"Nothing that comes from Microsoft can be for our good and benefit. They are dedicated to our destruction and downfall.

Mono has infected Gnome. Ubuntu uses Gnome. I switched to Kubuntu and am happy with it. Now Moonlight is infecting Linux."

There are two parts to the Linux community. One part sees Linux as a legitimate tool they can use to bring down costs while maintaining stability. The other sees this as some kind of holy war and is really just using Linux to act like drama queens.

The link here is a good defense of Mono but the people he's trying to defend it to are never going to listen.

mishmash2• 17 years ago

"The other sees this as some kind of holy war and is really just using Linux to act like drama queens."

No need to deride an entire class of your peers simply because their ideals are different than yours.

TomOfTTB4• 17 years ago

It's not their ideals it's that they express them in a way that's counterproductive and designed to draw attention to themselves and not participate in a discussion.

Let me give you another example of this type of behavior. I personally disagreed with many of the decisions the Bush Administration made in the U.S. I have had many thoughtful discussions with people who thought differently and have, in some cases, changed their minds ever so slightly. The guy down the road from me shares my ideals but he expressed it by hanging a life sized doll of George Bush by a noose outside his garage and then eventually lighting it on fire. I assure you he convinced no one who didn't already agree with him and his actions were really just a thinly veiled cry for attention.

cortesi3• 17 years ago

"There are two parts to the Linux community. One part sees Linux as a legitimate tool they can use to bring down costs while maintaining stability. The other sees this as some kind of holy war and is really just using Linux to act like drama queens."

Do you really think that the stability, low cost and quality of Open Source software is independent of the Free Software ideology? If I was being as derisive as you are above, I'd say that I hear this argument mostly from ignorant youngsters who have been lucky enough to inherit something marvellous that their elders fought hard for, but are now in danger of squandering everything through a moronic and self-centered lack of insight.

The truth is that the two things go hand in hand. Without a Richard Stallman who is idealistic and paranoid enough to worry about things like patents and personal freedom, Open Source would be in much worse shape than it is now. Without a Linus Torvalds to pragmatically build excellent software within the framework put together by the community, we would be much diminished. We need both. Open Source software is often the "best tool for the job" in a technical sense precisely because it is Free, with all that implies.

I personally think that we are right to be worried about Mono. We don't need to be alarmist, but we need to be wary. It's up to the Mono community to convince people that there is no licensing danger - the best way to do this is to lobby Novell and Microsoft to officially clarify the situation.

gaius4• 17 years ago

There's an old saying, "BSD is for people who love Unix, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft".

cschwarm• 17 years ago

> "Do you really think that the stability, low cost and quality of Open Source software is independent of the Free Software ideology?"

Well, I do. Open Source is basically just Economics.

An initial release of source code happens because there's often no (more) alternative usage for it. From a product point of view, it's often unfinished. Turning it into something that could have an alternative use -- such as being sold as Closed Source Software, for example -- usually requires additional efforts; additional investments of time and money. Another reason for releasing the source code is the "death" of former Closed Source Software: Either it was killed by competition or because people's wants and needs changed. No or little future profit is to be expected.

In both cases holds: The opportunity costs of releasing the source code are low or even zero. One looses nothing by releasing the source code. If you'd loose something, you simply wouldn't release it. And every Open Source advocate is fine with that.

As for contributing to Open Source: It simply pays. If a developer is sufficiently annoyed by a missing feature or a bug to justify make a patch, it will happen. It's pure self-interest. It's economic behaviour.

The next stage is the more important one: Why send the patch upstream? That's simply, again. First, the opportunity costs of sending the patch is zero, again. The developer couldn't use the code of the patch for anything else. Second, sending the patch upstream, will save him effort. If he (or she) wouldn't send the patch, that's basically a fork so he or she would have to waste his time solving conflicts, etc. Sending the patch upstream is, in most cases, pure self-interest. It's economic behaviour.

Accepting a patch is usually also rational, for it improves the source code for the original developer.

In other words: each stage of releasing initial source code, making patches that fixes bugs and improves the functionality, and accepting these, is entirely self-interest and economic behaviour.

No need for any ideology.

Your argument that Open Source wouldn't exists without Richard Stallman, is basically useless: How could we know whether it wouldn't? It's an empirical question that cannot be tested with an experiment.

However, we can make some analogies: Solutions are often invented when problems exists. In nature, the eye was invented several times independently because it helped the creatures to survive more often.

So, it seems save to say: Without Stallman, something like Open Source would have been invented by others. In fact, Project Gutenberg -- free distribution of classic texts -- was invented in 1971, already. The first BSD "distribution" was assembled in 1977. Several others released source code without ever having heard about Stallman and Free Software, before.

Again, no need for any ideology.

didroe• 17 years ago

I thought this was the best bit:

>Mono implements an international standard albeit one from a convicted monopolist. If this is a problem, why do people use C, the standard from convicted monopolist AT&T? Mono implements an improved, Free replacement for a proprietary offering. If this is a problem, why do people use GNU (which provided an improved, Free replacement for proprietary UNIX)?

rbanffy9• 17 years ago

I never realized AT&T was in a smear campaign against the use of competing C implementations.

Mono implements a _subset_ of a proprietary offering that is Free (as in speech and beer). GNU is pretty much a greatly enhanced superset of AT&T UNIX.

bitwize2• 17 years ago

Mono implements a standard from a convicted monopolist who has a stake in dominating the market the standard affects.

AT&T was barred by consent decree from entering the computer industry. Unix and C were, by the standards of the day, practically given away, and AT&T couldn't use the control over these they had to unfairly outcompete other companies.

sker• 17 years ago

Mono has such a bad reputation. If they want to get market, they will probably have to pull a Bing, i.e. rebrand it.

Unfortunately, they don't have $100m to pour into marketing.

TomOfTTB4• 17 years ago

I think you miss the point. They already have market. Most Corporate Networks run on Windows Servers. What Mono does is allow those Windows shops with their .Net experienced developers to start experimenting with and hopefully integrating Linux. Without having to change the language and framework they've standardized on.

In that way it gives Linux an inroad it didn't have before Mono.

davidw• 17 years ago

Yes and no. I think that, given all the money and hard work poured into it, Mono is, relative to other languages and things out there, not as popular as it "ought" to be. Here we have a first-rate JIT compiled language that's completely free (no Java ambiguity), with a team of smart hackers behind it, and yet not that many people use it. I don't, nor do I know anyone who does, besides one of the core developers who lives here in Padova.

rbanffy9• 17 years ago

"In that way it gives Linux an inroad it didn't have before Mono."

No, it doesn't. For internal development you have a wide variety of options. Java is quite good and very popular among those who consider the option of not running their wares under Windows. The only way Mono can appeal to Windows-only houses is by making it possible to run unmodified (and proprietary) products that run under Windows on other platforms.

Were I insane enough to allow my business to run on .NET and Windows, I would only consider migrating it to other platform if I had the assurance of being able to run it unmodified.

And, BTW, as it is, Mono is a patent minefield. Do you really trust Microsoft to act as a responsible corporate citizen when doing the right thing would cut their profits?

I wouldn't even if acting responsible would be profitable. Playing dirty seems too embedded in their corporate DNA.

dunk010• 17 years ago

I always thought that it was a bit of a marketing blunder naming it the same as the slang term for glandular fever.

gaius4• 17 years ago

Only in the US. Everywhere else in the world calls it "glandular fever".

Lol_Lolovici• 17 years ago

Actually Mono is the short form for the correct name of the disease, not a slang term:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononucleosis

pufuwozu• 17 years ago

What I find silly is that a large majority of developers prefer creating applications in Flash rather than Silverlight. Flash has proved to be very hard to reverse engineer thus has very little open-source support. With Silverlight, Microsoft has sponsored Novell in creating Moonlight which is completely open-source and could be built into every browser at one stage.

Yet I still read that people won't touch Silverlight because it's so proprietary and made by Microsoft!

jsz02• 17 years ago

That's probably one reason but as history proves people will stick with what is popular and has a big install base unless an alternative exists that is so compelling that there is a real incentive to adopt it and help push it as the replacement. Silverlight apparently is not catching on in that way. Even companies Microsoft paid to use it are jumping off the ship. That cannot possibly be a good sign for its future.

ovidiu• 17 years ago

Silverlight is proprietary. And it's just the same type of evil, but maybe at a lower degree (it's still based on proprietary codecs and the main implementation is not free/open source).

Developers choose flash because it's much more popular and has mature tools and a significant pool of experienced professionals who can work with it. It's not only about the technical features of Silverlight compared to Flash (Silverlight doesn't really stand out), it's also about the ecosystem.

bad_user2• 17 years ago

Moonlight for the moment has stability issues. I'm using version 1.9.3, which is a preview, and version 1 which is more stable is worthless since I haven't found many clips compatible with it.

What I do like about it is that Microsoft supports it. The first time I installed Moonlight was because of a page that required Silverlight, and on clicking the "Install Silverlight" button, I got redirected to the Moonlight page. That's pretty neat.

Silverlight has great potential, because you can reverse-engineer it more easily, has support for multiple languages and you only need a text editor to create a Silverlight clip. And in version 3 they are introducing an API for plugable codecs, which is making it possible to stream OGG/Theora and Vorbis files with a Silverlight applet.

Flash is more popular because of inertia, and because many designers use Macs and have invested heavily in Adobe tools. Microsoft Expression only runs on Windows. They would have a lot more to gain if they released a Mac port.

DLWormwood• 17 years ago

> Flash is more popular because of inertia, and because many designers use Macs and have invested heavily in Adobe tools.

A minor irony, Flash has had a bad reputation peformancewise on the Mac platform for a good decade now... and the migration from PPC to Intel hasn't helped matters much, as is my understanding.

rbanffy9• 17 years ago

A non-admin can't even install Silverlight on a Windows box! The installed base is close to zero and, at the same time, Flash is everywhere, with about 100% market share.

One doesn't need to look any further to understand why Silverlight is not the platform of choice for rich internet applications.

And, with HTML5 support on many browsers, I hope it never will.

Nelson69• 17 years ago

Silly? Flash has been around for ages, they've courted, supported and won over the design community, it seems to run most places you'd want it (already) and it's not Microsoft, it has great tool integration...

It'd be nice if there were maybe 2 or 3 factors that mattered but there are probably a dozen or more reasons people uses flash over silverlight and none of them have to do with openness. JavaFX and Silverlight are late to the game and they don't do anything more, they just don't raise the benchmark in any really significant ways.

Mono and Java both have been dealing with the same basic battle for their entire existence. C has been around longer, C is what the OS is written in... At least with Python or Ruby you don't have to compile so there is some sort of experiential advantage to the developer. Mono needs to be compiled, it's not terribly slow but all VMs (err, safe runtimes) have that stigma, you can develop much more rapidly with them with fewer bugs and there are whole classes of security defects that simply don't apply and then there is the tooling but that's just not sexy enough. If you only do C, then you're more "hardcore" and how the world perceives you as an OSS developer matters more than a lot of people want to admit.

The politics of Mono probably don't matter as much as the politics of Silverlight. Most of the people that worry about mono, from my experience, aren't developers. Where the design community is the primary user of flash and they've never been served by MS before and they have been exposed to stuff like IE's extended script.

jsz02• 17 years ago

I believe Linux would benefit greatly from more and better Windows ports of popular OSS applications that are common on Linux desktops. If you get people using the software the time will come when switching the OS they run on is an afterthought. Plus you gain the possible contributions of millions of Windows users who have no interest in Linux but may very well want to run good OSS software. I'm not sure this is a viable strategy with GTK or QT as the Windows implementations are subpar at best. Mono is probably the way to go if you're an OSS developer interested in creating an app for everyone to use -- not just the people who happen to accept your personal choice of operating system. Isn't that (basically) the bitch that most Linux fans have about Windows-only software? Seems silly to advocate the same solution replacing win32 with GTK or QT. While they may technically exist for Windows they are not adequate -- probably comparable to running win32 apps on Linux via WINE.

jasonkester6• 17 years ago

"Secondly, support for Microsoft.NET is a secondary goal for Mono"

Guys, you're killing me.

I really want to embrace Mono, but there is this fundamental disconnect between what the Mono team think they are building and what the real world needs them to be building.

Mono team, your ONLY goal should be to provide a 100% compatible .NET implementation that runs on Linux. That's it. Simply make my C# code work there, and I'll be happy.

Unfortunately, the Mono team is trying to do something else entirely. They're adding new language features and trying to extend it into their own thing. And nobody outside the Mono team can understand even for a minute why they would want to do that.

So here we are, 4 years into this project, and it still has pieces of .NET 1.1 that are not implemented. That means we can't use it yet. And while we're waiting patiently for a usable framework, the Mono team is off pursuing shiny .NET 3.5 functionality and inventing new functionality of their own. I mean sure, it sounds like fun and all, but us developers are still out in the cold waiting for a framework that the Mono team doesn't seem inclined to actually finish.

So guys, please, I'm begging you. Quit adding new stuff. Go back and finish what you started. Get .NET working on Linux like you promised. We'll all thank you for it!

limmeau• 17 years ago

"your only goal should be" or "I want you to"?

Perhaps they just want to be able to program in a decent statically-typed language with a GC and a JIT compiler and Gtk bindings?

jasonkester6• 17 years ago

That seems like a reasonable thing to want to do, and a worthy reason to split off a fork. It's certainly not worth hijacking as big or important a project as Mono to do so.

Mono needs to get a direction and follow it. At the moment, they're heading in a bunch of directions at once. If they don't want to be "A .NET Runtime That Works Anywhere", then they should say as much and stand aside so that somebody else can do it.

h1bored2• 17 years ago

I lead a dev team in the real world, using mono for all our work, and I don't need them to do any such thing. Your definition of the "ONLY" goal for them is utter claptrap and certainly not a definition of what the "real world needs".

Stop confusing your desires ("Simply make my C# code work there, and I'll be happy") with the only sane direction for them to go.

I certainly wouldn't thank them for slavishly copying .net 1.1 or any such thing. If you want that so badly, feel free to submit patches, I'm sure they'll gladly accept.

rbanffy9• 17 years ago

I am quite sure that complete compatibility with any one release of .NET would silence a lot of FUD by Microsoft and make pointy-haired bosses less reluctant to sign checks for deploying .NET/Mono applications on non-Microsoft platforms.

If it's you who are developing, it's easy to code around the holes, but if you need a closed-source application designed to run on .NET (and I don't know why people want these things, but they do) you have little to no choice but going Microsoft.

And that's a dealbreaker for Mono more often than you imagine.

jasonkester6• 17 years ago

You've piqued my curiosity. What are you using Mono for if not to run C# outside of Windows?

utnick2• 17 years ago

What 1.1 things don't work? I thought they were fully 2.0 compatible?

It has been quite good in my experience, obviously if you are doing windows specific things like registry or security it won't work, but that is to be expected.

jasonkester6• 17 years ago

Ah, but security isn't windows-specific. It's essential if you want to use anybody's APIs that require SSL (and sometimes have broken certs). And it doesn't work in Mono today.

This could possibly be fixed by now, but last I tried, the C# sample code to interact with Amazon S3 didn't run under Mono.

migueldeicaza3• 17 years ago

Jason,

The above statement makes it clear that you do not really follow Mono closely and your opinions are based on rumors rather than real life experience.

Let me explain:

I have not seen you post ever on our Mono mailing lists requesting the specific feature that is keeping your code from running on Mono.

I am having a hard time coming up with a feature of .NET 1.1 that you need to have on Mono (the stuff we do not implement does not make any sense on Linux, like support for WMI).

Mono implements quite happily all the core functionality up to .NET 3.5 with gaps on Windows Workflow (not there), WCF (Partial) and WPF (we are not going to implement it).

People that are adopting Mono (many of them) use our Migration Analysis tool to identify the spots that require rewriting (to remove Windows dependencies, and provide the Linux equivalent for example) and get moving on with their life.

From the statistics that we have colleced with the Moma Tool 1,592 application work out of the box; 1,823 require between 1 and 3 source code changes another 1,200 require from 4 to 10 changes. Now if you are even a remotely competent programmer, yous should be able to find work around for up to 10 changes in say, an afternoon?

The rest are more complicated, the next 3,000 or so reports will likely take from a week worth of work to a full scale reimplementation effort (the ones that have up to say 300 P/Invoke calls).

As for innovation in Mono: nothing anywhere says that we should stop at working on compatibility with .NET. We created Mono to create better applications for Linux, which is why we created bindings to Gtk# as well as some other couple hundred libraries: because we want to improve our ecosystem.

patrickg-zill• 17 years ago

Mono comes from the same makes-Linux-slow team as the people who "gifted" us with Gnome. Who are these guys really working for?

wvenable• 17 years ago

Python must be developed by the makes-Linux-frozen-in-time team then. And don't even get me started on KDE! If you're not running Linux as God intended, from the command line and programming only in C, you are part of the problem.

uriel5• 17 years ago

I will quote Al Viro (IMHO the best Linux kernel hacker by far):

    Yeah... "Infinitely extendable API" and all such. Roughly translated as "we
    can't live without API bloat". Frankly, judging by the GNOME codebase people
    who designed the thing [GNOME] are culturally incompatible with UNIX.

mtomczak• 17 years ago

I've seen Mono used to great effect in the Unity 3D game engine (http://unity3d.com/). Game engines are one of those interesting spaces where speed matters quite a bit, but so does ease of modification; you want your developers to be comfortable enough to implement whatever crazy ideas are designed up for game mechanics, and you need to be able to make sweeping changes to game logic quickly. But you need those implementations to be fast as well. With its multi-language support and JIT-compiled nature, Mono seems to sit at an interesting saddle-point that makes it attractive to applications like this. It's also cross-platform compilable, which in this age of multiple consoles-plus-PC-plus-mobile platforms is extremely attractive.

I couldn't tell you why they wouldn't use Java, however.

s3graham• 17 years ago

> I couldn't tell you why they wouldn't use Java, however.

Visual Studio and value types come to mind.

cryogenic• 17 years ago

Visual Studio is not a factor here, value types, delegates (aka safe function pointers), mono SIMD and C# are the factors that mono was chosen over Java. C# is more expressive and concise than Java, C# supports unsafe (pointer) operations inside unsafe blocks which is very valuable for a game engine if such a thing is required. Mono has a more powerful eventing model through the use of delegates, where the Java equivalent of using anonymous inner classes is much more syntax and runtime heavy. C# supports semantic closures and has iterators, very useful features for scripting support.

Plus Mono is more open than Java, was developed by open source community, therefore was already more easy to modify than Java, which has in house developed source.

My 2c.

billpg2• 17 years ago

Mono lets me write stuff in C# to run on Linux. What's not to like?

uriel5• 17 years ago

C#?

There are probably hundreds of open and free languages out there better than C# that can run under pretty much any platform under the sun.

billpg2• 17 years ago

And yet, people still write stuff using C#.

omouse• 17 years ago

What I hate about this piece is the anti-user angle. What a fucking prick. The only reason you're writing apps or working on frameworks/languages to write apps is for the users. Maybe you should listen to them once in a while.

Why Mono doesn't suck

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