Mono 2.0 has been released. So what?

Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 14 October 2008 04:24

Opinion and Analysis

Mono has now, according to claims in last week's Novell media release, caught up with some features of .NET. In other, aspects it still lags behind. And the danger of infringing on Microsoft's patents is still as present as it was at the beginning.

Microsoft Office 365

Why, then, did people run to hail the release as some kind of red-letter day for open source software? Was it a slow newsday?

Is it a case of circling the wagons and preventing criticism of something that should be criticised? Is it a subtle attempt to legitimise Novell's activities, its signing of a noxious deal with Microsoft that has allowed unproven accusations of patent infringement to be levelled against Linux?

Nobody even noticed that Novell's own press release cited a Microsoft-sponsored study by IDC to make claims about the extent to which .NET is used by industry.

The release claimed: "According to an IDC study (1), nearly 50 percent of IT decision makers, developers and architects surveyed, reported that they use Microsoft .NET as the application technology platform on which their mission-critical applications (excluding email) run. With Mono 2.0, developers can leverage their existing investment and skill sets to build .NET 2.0 applications for deployment on a variety of platforms, including Linux, Solaris*, Unix*, and Mac OS X*."

And right at the bottom of said release, there was this little bit of information: "(1) Source: IDC Survey Sponsored by Microsoft, 2007 Mission Critical North American Application Platform Study, August 2007". It's doubtful whether anyone bothered to even read till the end of the release, so eager were they to announce the big "news." Is there anyone who has been around for a few years in this industry who does not know exactly how much Microsoft-sponsored studies are worth when it comes to providing facts?

The only people who did deal with this development as it deserved were Pamela Jones, the paralegal who runs a site called Groklaw, and Roy Schestowitz , who runs the BoycottNovell site. Jones had this, among other things, to say: "“It’s hilarious to see the push on 'Linux' named sites to push Mono lately."

It's interesting to note that at least some of the worthies who provided all the hype had somewhat different views about Mono a few months back. Take Bruce Byfield, for example, a "computer journalist" who interviewed de Icaza for the website linux.com. (This site is part of the group that includes the American technology news accumulation site Slashdot and has, in the past, been mentioned by me).

In March this year, Byfield, in an article titled "9 improvements needed in GNOME", cited this improvement as one that was needed: "Eliminate Mono."

He went on: "I don't start automatically at the mention of Mono simply because it is an implementation of Microsoft's .NET. Nor am I made more than cautious by unproven suggestions that Mono might be vulnerable to claims of patent infringement. However, I do question GNOME's insistence on a feature that so many people object to, especially when so many other programming languages are available. I also wonder about the long-term effects of writing add-ons in another language instead of using C like the core of GNOME. Could speed and efficiency be compromised? If so, then giving developers a choice of languages could come at the cost of a major cleanup down the road. However you look at Mono, it just doesn't seem necessary. The default Debian installation of GNOME does quite nicely without it, and so could other distributions."

Yet when Byfield interviewed de Icaza after the 2.0 release, he had kid gloves on. He didn't raise anything negative about Mono and certainly not his own opinion which is cited above. Did he ask de Icaza about the long-term effects of writing add-ons in another language instead of using C like the core of GNOME? If he did, he certainly did not choose to inform his readers about the answer. Methinks a certain word like cowardice is in order here.