"Secondly, support for Microsoft.NET is a secondary goal for Mono"<p>Guys, you're killing me.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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!
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...<p>"Nothing that comes from Microsoft can be for our good and benefit. They are dedicated to our destruction and downfall.<p>Mono has infected Gnome. Ubuntu uses Gnome. I switched to Kubuntu and am happy with it. Now Moonlight is infecting Linux."<p>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.<p>The link here is a good defense of Mono but the people he's trying to defend it to are never going to listen.
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.<p>Yet I still read that people won't touch Silverlight because it's so proprietary and made by Microsoft!
I've seen Mono used to great effect in the Unity 3D game engine (<a href="http://unity3d.com/" rel="nofollow">http://unity3d.com/</a>). 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.<p>I couldn't tell you why they wouldn't use Java, however.
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.
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.
Mono has such a bad reputation. If they want to get market, they will probably have to pull a Bing, i.e. rebrand it.<p>Unfortunately, they don't have $100m to pour into marketing.