Bonum Certa Men Certa

Open/SUSE and .NET

Caged



Summary: Microsoft lock-in still enters GNU/Linux, with Novell's sponsorship

A QUICK look at Planet SUSE always fascinates because decent proportions of the posts there are not about SUSE. But it's not to do with people who write about banal things in life, either. It is about some people who are employed by Novell to advance .NET and -- by inference -- Windows as well.



Some of the posts in Planet SUSE are purely about Windows development, with some that combine Mono and Microsoft. For example:

In Visual Studio 2010 they added much better support for targeting multiple frameworks, allowing us to target .NET 2.0 and 4.0 from the same solution, which also gives us the ability to target runtime's such as Mono.


The examples above are from this guy, whose interests are:

C#, ASP.NET, Mono, .NET


Open/SUSE seems to be losing its focus. A lot of .NET content reaches the project and more examples are not difficult to find.

The debugger integration in MonoDevelop is progressing, lots of work in the past weeks. I'm going to show what is supported right now, altough much work is still left to make everything stable.


Here is a new example of development of MonoDevelop for Windows. The problem is that most Windows developers will use the lesser version of Visual Studio, not MonoDevelop. Regardless of Novell's intentions, this only promotes .NET. It helps Windows [1, 2, 3]. As Robert Pogson correctly points out:

"We do not need Mono or anything else connected to that other OS," blogger Robert Pogson told LinuxInsider via email. "Developers love GNU/Linux, which is why they are migrating to it in droves."

GNU/Linux was "designed and created by developers from all over the planet and over many decades, stemming from UNIX," Pogson explained. "There is nothing wrong with Mono except that it gives M$ more power over GNU/Linux. Any corporation that threatens litigation over software patents should be avoided like the plague."


As comments on the article above (titled "Is Linux Suffering From Mono?"), consider Rainer Weikusat who wrote:

In my opinion, .NET is a pretty typical example of 'Microsoft designed APIs': It is both weird (for instance, there is a 'web client' superclass which has 'ftp client' and ' http client' subclasses) and hellishly complicated (at least one person whom I had to work together with during the last couple of months was literally incapable of using .NET CF to accomplish something as simple as transmitting a HTTP POST-request) and those students would be much better of with learning a few other languages and especially, with getting used to the terminology based on 'the internet standards' (ie the IETF RFCs) than to some Microsoft-only bastardization of them which only helps to ensure that nobody can talk to a '.NET-developer' about these topics except another .NET-developer and that the .NET-developer will have at least some troubles trying to understand the actual specifications of the protocol he or she is expected to work with.


GreyGeek adds:

LinuxInsider leaving a pro MS slant. In this case, a pro MONO/.NET slant. Kevin Dean is the quoted source taking over for Jo Shields as the point person calling everyone who opposes MONO in Linux as "fanatics", etc...

[...]

In other words, Canonical CANNOT take Ubuntu commercial and still include MONO.


That last point is indeed a potential issue because "civil disobedience" would not work for a business, which is subjected to sanctions. Here is a person who is moving to Fedora because Fedora is removing Mono.

There’s a lot of hype/war on the “Mono issue” lately but I don’t want to get into all that. My opinion is, yet again, simple: nothing related to Microsoft, please. Microsoft proved themselves to be evil every step of the way. They don’t like free software, they don’t like people using free software, they don’t like companies that bundle their hardware with free software. All of these can be fine until they start bribing judges, pressuring governments (governments for crying out loud!), blackmailing OEM’s, using their licenses against every single computer user they can. We have seen a couple of their trojan horses of licenses (just a quick look at http://www.groklaw.net/ would suffice) which means we cannot and more importantly should not trust anything coming from Microsoft.


"Some people always blame mono," says this bug report, but the point worth making is that there is no reason to lean on Microsoft. Java is the more mature software for those who require it. Microsoft is lagging in terms of programming, so to imitate it is just plainly absurd. To Novell, it is a matter of repaying Microsoft.

Even people from Microsoft don't support what Microsoft does to programming. As Fewa showed us last night, there are testimonies too.

If you’ve ever used Microsoft Access or Excel, you have likely used a product that Mike Gunderloy had a hand in developing. The irony is that Gunderloy himself doesn’t use those products anymore. He’s given up Microsoft for open source — and he’s not going back.

Gunderloy, an Evansville, Ind.-based freelance developer for the past quarter century, goes way back with Microsoft. “I was never a full-time employee, but have several times been a contractor with a badge and [Redmond] campus access,” he says.

His contracting work — on the order of half a million dollars, Gunderloy estimates — led to a substantial amount of code contributed to the Access and Excel versions of Microsoft Office 97 and 2000. He’s also worked on other, more obscure parts of the Microsoft software empire, including SQL Server, C#, and ASP.Net.


Fewa explains:

He refused to "contribut[e] to the eventual death of programming."[7] He states: "Microsoft itself represents a grave threat to the future of software development through its increasing inclination to stifle competition through legal shenanigans."


Sounds like Mono.

Recent Techrights' Posts

"Internal Changes at Red Hat / IBM"
It seems like quite a few people are leaving
Confirmed in French Media: Mass Layoffs (10% Culled) in Microsoft France
Now some reports in French
Microsoft in Freefall in Finland
Can Finland eradicate Windows from all its infrastructure, including core operations that are sensitive to sabotage by cracking?
Google's Chrome Passes 70% and Web Standards Are Dying
The Web is quickly becoming devoid of any standards
Slopwatch: Plagiarism and Ponzi Scheme, Bubble About to Burst Entirely, Admits Goldman Sachs
the hype that Google News and The Register MS actively participate and profit from
The Register MS Says "AI Web Crawlers Are Destroying Websites", So Why Does The Register MS Help 'AI' Companies? (Spoiler: Money)
People need to call out The Register MS on its hypocrisy
Slopfarms Already Peaked, They Will Die When Slop Companies Run Out of Money to Borrow
slopfarms will lack an actual "engine"
Why We Publish Information About the SLAPPs (But Not About the Legal Process), an Abuse of Process by Americans Trying to Silence Critics of Their Employer, Microsoft
It doesn't take thousands of pages to explain something simple
 
"Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
"Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 02, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025
Links 02/09/2025: Oligarch Tech and Text Encoding Concerns in Ada
Links for the day
"People on LinkedIn Saying That They've Left Red Hat."
We already saw signs of it a month ago and named some of the people
Gone With the BRICs (or BRICS): "Linux 8" in Cuba
GAFAM must be worried
Telecompaper Reports Microsoft to Reduce the Workforce by Another 10% (in France)
Imagine what this will do to staff's morale
India is Back to Windows 8 (Market Share Down to 8%) as Android Soars to a New Record High
For Microsoft, India is a runaway market
Links 02/09/2025: SCO Summit and Russia Suspected Of Jamming GPS
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/09/2025: Mediterranean Marriage and Staying Connected at 35,000 Feet
Links for the day
Links 02/09/2025: Attacks on Unions, Microsoft TCO, and DDoSing a Growing Problem
Links for the day
Internet Relay Chat Didn't Fall Off a Cliff
IRC will turn 40 in less than 3 years from now
The UEFI 9/11 - Part V - This is Not a Drill (Disable "SecureBoot" Now)
A "9/11" Coming
There's No Obligation to Speak to Anybody
The very fact that "bkuhn" is till spending time in social control media says a lot about his poor judgment
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 01, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 01, 2025
Microsoft Trying to Force People to Resign (Amid Mass Layoffs) a Strategy That Takes Its Toll
Microsoft seems to be circling down the drain and the "final flush" will be the moment the "hey hi" (AI) bubble implodes completely
Google Simply Cannot Be Trusted
Only fools would trust GAFAM
Admission That a Third Party (or Parties) Funds the SLAPPs Against Techrights
This can end up costing them over a million dollars
Modifying and Writing One's Own Computer Programs is Not a Crime (or: Google Proves That Stallman Was Right)
We're generally gratified to see so many positive mentions of him
Why We Stopped Publishing Videos (for Now)
We'll probably get back to videos one day, but it's hard to say when or to what extent
What Animal Rights Activism Teaches Us About Sympathy and Focus
It's possible to believe that the planet is warming, that we must do something about it, and still eat eggs and butter
When You Turn Web Sites About Tech Into Political Sites
A lot of people fall into the trap of catering only for particular groups
Gemini Links 02/09/2025: ROOPHLOCH 2025 and Lagrange 1.19 Released
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: News Corp. WSJ and A Month With NixOS
Links for the day
“Sideloading” Never Killed Anybody
There are many online discussions this week about the misnomer "sideloading"
Slopwatch: Google News as FUD Vector Against Linux and Plagiarism Enhancer, Serial Slopper (SS) Uses LLMs to Googlebomb "Linux"
Slop destroys the Web not just by screwing with search engines and helping plagiarists. It's also responsible for de facto DDoS attacks...
Links 01/09/2025: "Attacks on Science" and China's "Soft Power" Grows
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Fresh Backlash Against Slop and "Norway’s Electricity Crisis is About to Hit Britain"
Links for the day
Writing and Coding Isn't Always Enough
Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
Links 01/09/2025: Catching Up (Mostly via Deutsche Welle), "Windows TCO" Effect in UK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: Linguistic Barriers and "Web 1.0 Hosting"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 31, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 31, 2025
Autumn Has Come
Autumn should be exciting in all sorts of ways; it'll also mark our anniversary
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IV - External Interference
They all seem to be playing a role in crushing Software Freedom and self-determination for users