Novell and Mono/Moonlight

[wildman4god]

What's the general consensis here about said subjects.

[phrostbyte]

I think Mono is a good project not only because it helps in a way similar to the Wine project, it gives developers more options on what tools to use to improve the free software ecosystem.

[directhex]

Mono and Moonlight are distinct topics

Moonlight was created specifically to enable access to Silverlight-only sites, by Linux users (i.e. to bring Linux up to first-class citizen status where those sites are concerned)

Mono, on the other hand, was created because Evolution sucks. Evolution was Ximian's biggest, fattest, most unmaintainable monolithic piece of C, and they were looking to learn from those mistakes. As part of this, they explored the option of using more high-level frameworks - and that included early looks at Microsoft's new .NET framework. By creating a clone of .NET, Ximian saw an opportunity to make developing desktop apps for GNOME hundreds of times easier than simple C with GObject. Mono's primary goal, as stated in 2002 and worked on since then, is to make developing apps for the Linux desktop easy. The ability to run Windows .NET apps is a "free" bonus, but a secondary goal. The goal is to allow apps like Banshee, Gnome-Do, F-Spot etc to exist, not run Windows apps - unlike Moonlight, whose goal is interop

[smbm]

Mono and Moonlight are distinct topics

Moonlight was created specifically to enable access to Silverlight-only sites, by Linux users (i.e. to bring Linux up to first-class citizen status where those sites are concerned)

Mono, on the other hand, was created because Evolution sucks. Evolution was Ximian's biggest, fattest, most unmaintainable monolithic piece of C, and they were looking to learn from those mistakes. As part of this, they explored the option of using more high-level frameworks - and that included early looks at Microsoft's new .NET framework. By creating a clone of .NET, Ximian saw an opportunity to make developing desktop apps for GNOME hundreds of times easier than simple C with GObject. Mono's primary goal, as stated in 2002 and worked on since then, is to make developing apps for the Linux desktop easy. The ability to run Windows .NET apps is a "free" bonus, but a secondary goal. The goal is to allow apps like Banshee, Gnome-Do, F-Spot etc to exist, not run Windows apps - unlike Moonlight, whose goal is interop

Exactly.

None of the options in the poll seem to fit the bill properly.

They're definitely positive projects though.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I didn't vote for any of the options either.

[Tibuda]

I didn't voted for any of the options. I run Linux applications with Mono (Do, Tomboy and Banshee), but no Windows applications. I think Mono is just to allow Linux programmers to use .Net languages like C# and Vb.net. Why the paranoia?

[Vince4Amy]

I have no problem at all with Mono, and as I've said before if people have a problem with Novell then they really shouldn't be running Linux.

[Dragonbite]

For all of the benefits we see on the desktop with Mono and Moonlight I think businesses see the larger benefit of running Mono to either manage legacy systems or to tap into their existing knowledge workers' skills.

[wildman4god]

I posted this poll, because I have seen across the internet that some people don't like mono and think that novell is a sellout to microsoft, I just wanted to get a more relistic feel as to what linux users really think about it.

This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell#Agreement_with_Microsoft) is were I herd that many linux users don't like mono or novell.

[directhex]

I posted this poll, because I have seen across the internet that some people don't like mono and think that novell is a sellout to microsoft, I just wanted to get a more relistic feel as to what linux users really think about it.

This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell#Agreement_with_Microsoft) is were I herd that many linux users don't like mono or novell.

Many don't.

But not for any technical reasons - but because it offends their childish "fighting against the man" sentiments that they think they gain from not running Windows.

[Redache]

I see no issue with Mono whatsoever. I personally don't care for C# or the .Net Platform but the fact remains that a large amount of Companies have trained staff that can only use Microsoft's Tools. Something like Visual Basic is a godsend for smaller companies as it is quick to create and roll out software with it (Especially if you think about the Visual Basic that you can integrated with MS Office Products, for example creating an Access Database that has a full separate GUI that allows quick and simple database creation). Until The Open Source Community has an alternative to these quick to production platforms then Mono is necessary.

Moonlight is brilliant and I respect Microsoft for their help to the Novell team working on Moonlight. Instead of NOW having Flash supported to a reasonable degree in Linux by Adobe Microsoft started off with full cooperation with the Linux community so that if Silverlight does turn into a major player in the Interactive/Multimedia Web then we don't have to struggle for ages until something gets done. Moonlight also has certain features that are superior to Silverlight.

How anybody can see Novell as evil or Mono and Moonlight as evil is beyond me. They are trying to make it easier for all of us.

[Methuselah]

I didn't vote because my view on it is not really there.
I think it's good for potentially enabling Linux able to run more applications.
I do not really think that it should be the platform of choice for new open source projects or become inextricably entwined in critical open source software projects.
Or rather, I should say, I'm wary of that development.