The fact is though, that purchases for things which last are better investments and have better features. Things which are totally controllable by the consumer are even better. Things which can be modified and improved are even better. Freedom is a feature, it’s that simple. I don’t mind paying for paid development of course, there’s nothing wrong with that, but of course I’d rather give my money to something which gives me more features. So, in an ideal world, software could be created very easily by anyone and it’d be like art or anything else, but sometimes you could commission and pay for some of it, and the process would be simple and the developer/artist would receive the payment and deliver the product.

I think it can be done, too, it just takes more communication to get there, but my point is right now things are tough, so you still have to respect those who choose to pay for a dead end solution when there’s no other way, no other solution. You don’t want to discourage looking for one of course, but as long as consumers know what they’re getting into and know the ramifications for doing so, it’s their choice. I’d just like to make it possible for better choices to be presented to them in the future.

So yeah, long story short, pick Java or some other language that isn’t inherently controlled by companies that have an interest in seeing you on Windows.

Speaking of Sun, I think they should just break down and abandon openSolaris for Linux. It’s just too much of a wasted effort and too far behind at this point I think, might as well just take what is good, port it to Linux, and concentrate on other projects.

The more I learn, the more I understand and believe in what Richard Stallman and the FSF does.

Microsoft is the cancer.

From Wikipedia: “Although the C# language definition and the CLI are standardized under ISO and ECMA standards, the CLI is only a part of Microsoft’s Base Class Library (BCL), which also contains non-standardized classes that are used by many C# programs (some extended IO, User Interface, Web services, …). Furthermore, parts of the BCL have been patented by Microsoft,[24][25] which may deter independent implementations of the full framework, as only the standardized portions have RAND protection from patent claims.”

Microsoft doesn’t do stuff for everyone, they do stuff for *them* and they expect to collect. The only reason for the *support* of C# and .NET by *Microsoft* is to create dependency on Windows, which is not free as in beer, i.e. they end up collecting.

What world do you inhabit, Roy?

Are you SERIOUSLY claiming that writing a high-level library to an XML format in one language means that language is tainted? How about the g++/Windows connection, given Windows is partly C++?

We discussed this the other day. Look at the OOXML SDK.

Of course, everyone wants stuff like this, but obviously unrestricted platforms is of more long-term benefit. That’s why the Linux ecosystem having good development tools is extremely important. Linux needs to help it’s developers create, package, and release Linux software as easy and as quickly as it can, so more unification/framework/API efforts are needed in this area.

Mono brings a raft of other things with it, such as Silverlight and OOXML.

The closest thing Mono has to “bringing OOXML” is the ability to open Zip files, and the ability to read XML.

There are absolutely no libraries or abilities related specifically to OOXML anywhere in Mono’s source tree.

As for Silverlight, what Mono contains is some XML manifests used by the Mono Linker to create the cut-down 2.1 base library, from the 2.0 library, without the need for any distinct source or additional compilation. This includes a wrapped compiler, smcs, which uses 2.1 instead of 2.0 by default.

That’s the actual extent of the supposed “raft of other things with it, such as Silverlight and OOXML”

Regardless, I’m much more interested in seeing languages/APIs/etc be developed that aren’t skewed by agendas toward specific operating systems. Many companies can be, including Linux distro companies by, say, wanting to lock users into their repositories and not help cross-distro application efforts, like I always bitch about. ^^

Quotes from 2008:

“Our partnership with Microsoft continues to expand.”

–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO

“[The partnership with Microsoft is] going very well insofar as we originally agreed to co-operate on three distinct projects and now we’re working on nine projects and there’s a good list of 19 other projects that we plan to co-operate on.”

–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO