3 ms·

Would be awesome if microsoft pulls an apple and unifies windows and windows mobile under a single platform. That and porting the .net runtime to linux/osx/bsd

• MichaelGG 16y ago
  Well WinPhone7 seems to be heavily pushing Silverlight and XNA, which also run on the desktop. So there's some unification there. As far as MS releasing a full .NET for other OSes? I can't ever see that happening. Why would they want their army of VB/C# "enterprise" developers being able to deploy without spending on Windows licenses? Their support of Novell/Mono means people can still choose .NET for some projects; probably people that might not have used .NET otherwise. But at least the bulk of business apps developed will still need Windows (and probably SQL Server).
  • dman 16y ago
    Low cost deployment is the new reality. a) Without having a low cost deployment option the competiveness of microsoft is greatly reduced in the big data market. b) It might take Microsoft 3-4 years to work out the business model but having a portable .net framework with low / zero cost deployment would make apps written in .net viable in sectors where they dont have a chance currently - embedded , big data. c) The few startup people ive talked to have all worried about "theoretical portability", ie they might never use the portability but they would like the programs to work on different OS's. d) OSX actually benefits greatly from its unixy structural similarity to linux / bsd. Most developers I see here in NYC develop on osx and deploy on linux (linode, heroku etc) e) While Mono is a great project, having a blessed / direct version of .net would reduce the business risk in the mind of customers.